Hello everyone. Sorry it has been so long since the last post. I have been busy island hopping searching for corals. I tried to upload this video many times during my travels, but the internet connection in Indonesia is in the stone ages! I tried to do a post on this video back in March of this year, but gave up due to bad connection. The video is part 1 of 4. I had to break it up into four parts due to its 32 minute length (youtube allows only maximum of 9 minutes or so per video). Below is the text from March of this year under the post "There's Hope". I will be posting the second part in the coming days (if internet allows).
Less Village "Fish Don't Cry" Video Part 1Ok guys, for today's topic, I would like to talk about a local fishing village that came together to make a difference. They went from cyanide to net catching. The place is called Les Village up in Northern Bali. A video was made to document the process and is called "Fish don't cry". I obtained this video from Robert at Aquatic Specialties and Pets (wholesaler), my friend who has closed down since. The guys from Les Village actually came to the US to visit Robert. This video was subsequently given to him by the Les Village guys. Robert did good business with them for a while, but after a management change, everything went downhill. Robert asked me to go visit Les when I got to Bali.
It turned out that my current fish exporter friend in Bali were buying from Les Village. But the fish were coming in terrible. We decided to make the trip and go see them. It was kind of sad seeing the poor facility, nothing like the scenes I saw in the video. There were not even holding tanks. The fish were being kept in plastic bags. My friend eventually ended up sending them used glass tanks to hold the fish, and the quality drastically improved.
Unfortunately, all of my pictures from this trip is in my old lap top computer. I accidentally forgot to transfer those pictures to my new lap top. So for now, enjoy the video. I will be making another follow up trip to Les soon and I will update with lots of pictures. You must watch this video as it is truly inspiring. One day when I have lots of money and time, I would like to promote "Les" type of operation all over Indonesia. With money and training, it can be done - there is hope!
The biggest problem that I see to the environment in our trade, is not the collection of wild corals. It is the use of cyanide by the fishermen. For every coral collector, you probably have a hundred fish catching guys. Can you imagine the destruction? Then there is another big group of fishermen who use cyanide to catch consumption fish - live groupers for the seafood trade.
Cheers,
Eddie
