Mongabay series: Indonesian Fisheries

Off the coast of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, the Malacca Strait was once home to dolphins. In their place, there are now barges filled with coal, brought by sea to…

KENDARI, Indonesia — Next year will mark the completion of a nearly mile-long bridge being built over this booming industrial city’s iconic bay, say government officials here. But researchers studying…

JAKARTA — A newly drilled oil well operated by Indonesian state-owned energy company Pertamina has been spilling thousands of barrels of oil into the sea and the northern Java coast…

The coral reefs of the lesser Sunda-Banda seascape in southeastern Indonesia host some of the planet’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems, which remain relatively untouched even as overfishing ravages sea life…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency has charged a governor from the island of Sumatra with bribery in connection to a land reclamation project, in the latest high-profile case of environmental…

ARU ISLANDS, Indonesia — In one of this country’s most isolated places, Ipus Apalem believes he has finally found a way for his village of 400 to improve its lot.…

JAKARTA — Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration will withhold a key permit for a plan to build artificial islands in Bali’s Benoa Bay as long as strong opposition to the…

JAKARTA — The widespread use of wooden fences to trap fish by coastal fishermen in tropical countries is causing extensive economic, social, and environmental damage, according to a new study.…

JAKARTA — Many of the fishing vessels operating in Indonesia’s waters at night do so undetected, masking what could be illegal fishing on a massive scale, according to a new…

SUNGAI NIBUNG, Indonesia — The phone signal comes and goes and the electricity grid has yet to reach this patch of jungle on the west coast of Borneo. The quickest…

DENPASAR/JAKARTA — In November 2017, when locals spotted 10 sperm whales stranded on a beach on the island of Sumatra, they had no idea what to do. Stuck in shallow…

AMBON, Indonesia — Last February, a crocodile in eastern Indonesia crawled right into a trap. The animal, a 2-meter-long (6.6-foot) saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), was suspected to have preyed on…

DARUBA, Indonesia — The Indonesian government has established three new marine protected areas within the Coral Triangle, home to the highest diversity of corals and reef fishes anywhere on the…

PALU, Indonesia — Few people knew about the luscious coral off Palu, in Indonesia’s Central Sulwaesi province, before an earthquake turned it into an underwater wasteland. “You didn’t even need…

DENPASAR/BURU ISLAND, Indonesia — Illegal online mercury sales are booming in Indonesia, and activists have had enough. "Nearly all the mercury players in Indonesia do their business illegally,” says Yuyun…

JAKARTA — Two ships have been spotted allegedly dumping waste oil in the sea off the eastern coast of Sumatra, highlighting what activists say is poor enforcement against marine pollution…

JAKARTA — Authorities in Indonesia have launched an investigation into the mass die-off of captive-bred sharks earlier this month at a facility in a marine national park off Java. In…

JAKARTA — Indonesia has clinched a $2.52 million settlement from the operators of two foreign-flagged ships that damaged coral reefs in the sea off southeastern Sumatra in 2017. The Bahamian-flagged…

JAKARTA — Indonesia is racing to certify its world-leading tuna fisheries as sustainable, drawn by the lucrative global market for eco-labeled seafood. The government has since 2014 rolled out a…

JAKARTA — Marine conservationists in Indonesia say neither of the two candidates running in this year’s presidential election has shown any real commitment to boosting the sustainability of one of…

JAKARTA — Construction and commercial activities have quietly resumed on a land reclamation project that was ordered stopped by the Jakarta governor last year, prompting criticism of the authorities’ lack…

JAKARTA — Usman’s been glued to the TV news lately. A young fisherman living in Batang, along the northeastern coast of Indonesia’s main island of Java, Usman is closely following…

JAKARTA — When Indonesian authorities seized a notorious fishing boat last April carrying 30 kilometers (18 miles) of illegal gillnets, they found they had essentially caught a ghost. The STS-50…

LAMBANGAN and UWEDIKAN, Indonesia — “At first, I saw some spinefoot fish, about 50 of them. I was smoking out on the water.” It was midday three years ago, says…

SERIWE, Indonesia – Sunardi remembers the sky lit up red with sunset as he checked the bag his wife had prepared: Change of clothes, check. Cigarettes, dinner, check. He examined…

JAKARTA — Officials in Indonesia have released a predictive calendar they hope will give fish farmers in the country’s largest lake a heads-up on water conditions that have previously killed…

"We need to keep this river clean,” says Muhammad Yusuf, a fisheries official from Padang, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Sumatra. “We’ve got to keep people from…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Hundreds of people in Bali are celebrating a key victory against a multi-billion-dollar land reclamation project that would have destroyed vast swaths of mangroves on the resort…

Millions of fish in floating cages died suddenly this week in Lake Toba, the biggest lake in Indonesia. E. Naibaho, a local aquafarmer, noticed the fish in his floating pens…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Fishermen and environmental activists in Indonesia are demanding accountability after a barge spilled 7,000 tonnes of coal off the Sumatra coast, polluting beaches, damaging coral and…