dangerous waters…

There has always been a connection between Australia and Indonesia, if not through our proximity, then through our wildlife. At times, this has been a connection of animosity. Fights over ownership of territories & fishing rights, even I remember as a child, watching Indonesian fishing boats enter protected areas where we were diving, but on the remote reefs, the sea is fair game.

Since landing in one of the many ground zero’s of the artisanal shark fishermen, I have learnt so much from them, one of those things being, their venture into our waters is more common than I imagined. It is, however, important to recognise the circumstances under which this happens… desperation, drive for family, pressure from the shark fin buyers who they cannot return home to with an empty boat.

This is the story of a fishermen who will remain anonymous who shared his tale with us here at Project Hiu, this insight being an honour we recognise. In 2008, a boat left Indonesia in the search for sharks, it wasn’t long before they were lost. The essential navigation equipment we rely on to even leave the marina is not in the budget of a shark fishing boat built from scratch, they follow the ocean, not a system, but this time, that wouldn’t work for them, they became lost. The only thing worse than being lost at sea, is losing your engine, which is exactly what happened to them.

With no way of starting the boat, the fishermen and their vessel drifted for five days…. Each day, they made serval attempts to fix the engine, pray to their god and of course… fish. With no engine and no idea of location, they had drifted so far, that they were in Australia. They know this because of the helicopter that hovered above them issuing a warning. They had to somehow prove to the helicopter operators that their engine was broken and they were not at fault for this infraction.

They must have believed them, because they next part of the story they told me is they wound up drifting to a small island off the coast of Australia, what island this is, I still don’t know, neither do they. It was there they fixed their engines, they began to make their way back home and continued to fish along the way.

They used the moon and stars to find their way back. No other boats were ever spotted while they were out on the water, just them. They caught 6 different kind of sharks (hammerhead, tiger, airplane (what we know to be a shovelnose), black tip, grey nurse, and another unknown species). They caught about 60 sharks in total, including a pregnant female. When back then they were only paid 20-25 million for the catch (around 2000.00 -2,500.00 AUD). Once back from the trip, safely on their island, one of the crew passed away in his sleep for unknown reasons. Perhaps he was waiting for the comfort of his own bed to pass, something that he did not know he'd see again.

They were lost for a total of 1 month.