Voices from the Sea

I wrote is about a year ago - a prologue to my photo exhibition.


It was the dry season of 2002 when I found it hard to finish my lunch at a tourist resort in West Bali. I was at my final year in the university and the resort supported my research. The heat was almost unbearable and the landscape of the village turned brown.

A fisherman was caught poaching fish in the protected sea area in front of the resort. He said he had to do it; his family was starving. So I went to his house on that very afternoon and found that his family of seven had only four small small-tuna for dinner.

This might sound like a cliché but similar stories with different variations can be found throughout Asia and the Caribbean. This realization changed me profoundly. Since that day, I have understood that environmental conservation, in essence, is the effort to save human race. We are not saving a coral reef. Not the fish. When we save the environment, we are saving mankind.
Eventually, our research team decided to build a rumpon or fish aggregating device in the water around the man’s village.

I grew up in the city with my family and was not close to the sea. Luckily, when I was still in junior high, my mother dragged me (literally!) to the pool to learn how to swim. I was afraid of water, let alone the sea.

But we never know where life will lead us. I got into the Marine Science Department in college. I have to admit, I was happy and nervous at the same time. But during that period, I found the love of my life: a green turtle freely roaming between the corals of Seribu Island – when I practiced for Open Water Scuba Diving for the first time. I was in love! And like most people who are in love, my heart broke when I saw the damage from the past developing in the present. And what I realized the climate change became the source of the damages.

I hope that the efforts that made artificial Biorock reefs in Bali by the villagers of Pemuteran; the self-supported rehabilitation of reef habitat done by people of Sebesi Island; the utilization of wild coral in the coral farm scheme in Seribu Island; the underwater beauty from Sabang, Derawan to Buton; can generate inspiration for all of us.

I can never express enough thanks to everybody who work their hardest to save our ocean.

Let us hear the Voices From The Sea.

Bogor, October 6th 2009
Ramadian Bachtiar