Arti Ekawati

Fishermen wait for customers at the Lampulo fishing port in Banda Aceh. (Photo: Binsar Bakkara, AP)

Wild Fisheries Industry Suffering Drought in Aquaculture Investment

The domestic aquaculture sector is suffering from a lack of investment, putting the country’s traditional wild fisheries under increasing threat, an official at the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries said on Tuesday.

“We’re pretty good at cultivation technology and the marketing of some products, such as shrimp,” said Sahala Hutabarat, head of the ministry’s human resources development agency. “But we’re very low on investments to develop aquaculture.”

Sahala welcomed the ministry’s Rp 161 billion ($15.6 million) development program to provide credit to small- and medium-sized aquaculture enterprises, but he said the program had yet to prove effective.

The ministry launched the scheme in 120 districts and municipalities on March 17.

Grouper stocks, silver catfish, shrimp, pearls and seaweed are areas that particularly need further investment, Sahala said.

Insufficient investment meant Indonesia was only using about 500,000 to 600,000 hectares for fish farms, out of a total potential area of 1.25 million hectares. “This excludes land located in coastal areas for brackish water [high salinity] cultivation,” Sahala said.

He said the time it took to invest and the lack of proper infrastructure were probably to blame for the dearth of investment.

Iwan Sutanto, chairman of Shrimp Club Indonesia, an association representing local shrimp farmers, said shrimp cultivation in many areas suffered from a total lack of industrial power supplies, meaning farmers had to invest in expensive generators.

“This is an additional cost that the government — either local or central — should be able to solve,” he said.

Sahala said traditional wild fisheries were under threat due to barriers in the aquaculture industry, with overfishing pushing supplies to breaking point.

Sahala, also a professor of oceanography at Diponegoro Unversity, said fishermen would soon face problems if they did not quickly shift to cultivation. “The condition of ocean fisheries here is extremely problematic,” he said.

Indonesia annually produces 6.4 million tons of fish stocks that can be potentially harvested. Fishermen need to harvest up to about 5.12 million tons and save the remaining 1.28 million tons to ensure sustainable supplies.

Traditional and modern fishermen caught 4.7 million tons last year. Although that fell short of the 5.12 million ton limit, Hutabarat said the North Java Sea and Straits of Malacca have been overfished. “We must move into aquaculture, or in the next 30 years, we won’t be able to eat fish.”

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