Mongabay series: Indonesian Fisheries

SAMARINDA, Indonesia — Activists in eastern Borneo suspect that an Irrawaddy dolphin found dead on a local beach last month had probably been snagged in a fishing net. This is…

JAKARTA — Not everyone supports the Indonesian government’s decision to publish information on the location of fishing boats in its waters, via data mapping platform Global Fishing Watch, accessible to…

Indonesian authorities have indicted five local shipping companies on charges of gross negligence after their coal barges damaged coral reefs in a Javan marine park, a local official told Mongabay.…

JAKARTA -- Indonesia is suing an arm of Thailand’s biggest energy group, PTT, for the equivalent of more than $2 billion over a 2009 oil spill the archipelago country says…

MAKASSAR, Indonesia — Sand mining in the waters off the southern tip of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island has been put on hold by the provincial government after multiple ferocious rejections from…

Text by Jacopo Pasotti, photos by Elisabetta Zavoli MANGUNHARJO, Indonesia – A mangrove forest once surrounded this village on Java’s northern coast. That was before the woods were clear-cut to…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government can’t restore one of the country’s best coral reefs until it strikes a compensation deal with the insurer of the cruise line that wrecked it,…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — A recent spate of busts has placed Bali in the spotlight once again as a key domestic market for endangered sea turtles. In February, Bali marine police…

JAKARTA — The extent of coral reef damage from the grounding of a Bahamian-flagged cruise ship at Raja Ampat earlier this month is about 3.5 times as big as an…

JAKARTA — One of the main coral reefs at Raja Ampat, an Indonesian island chain home to perhaps the world's richest marine biodiversity, was severely damaged last week when a…

Indonesian police arrested five fishermen last week for trafficking 38 sea turtles from an important nesting site in the archipelago country’s eastern waters. Six of the turtles were dead. The…

During 74 days in late 2009, a leak in the Montara offshore drilling platform gushed tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Timor Sea, a body of water…

Made by human hands, thousands of floating structures that attract fish speckle Indonesian waters throughout the archipelago. Some drift. Some stand anchored to the ocean bottom. These fish aggregating devices —…

On a cloudless September morning in the Central Javan hamlet of Pandansari, the coastal air drips with mist and the clamor of cawing seagulls. Forty-five-year-old Mashadi, who like many Indonesians…

Village leaders in Sumberejo, East Java, once had plans to entice travelers to their coastal town. Tourist facilities were planned for Ndaki Beach where the waves of the Indian Ocean…

The southern coast of Java — from Pelabuhan Ratu in the west to Puger Beach at the Indonesian island's eastern tip — is an important breeding ground for sea turtles.…

The waves of the Indian Ocean crash against the breakwater at Bawur Bay, a protective arm shielding the Pacitan coal-fired power plant. A few meters away, a barge full of…

JAKARTA — The archipelagic country of Indonesia has revised upward the official count of its islands, from 13,466 to 14,572. The former figure was submitted in 2012 to the last UN…

Southeast Sulawesi Province consists mostly of water. Around 75 percent of the province's territory lies offshore, in the Banda Sea and the Gulf of Boni.  Its coasts and waters are…

GILI TRAWANGAN, Indonesia — The sun is rising behind Mount Rinjani as a group of divers boards a boat to Shark Point, a spot popular among sea turtles and reef…