November 08, 2002

Pindito anchored at Pulau Sissie (02° 07' 138" S, 130° 19' 576" E)

The speedboat dropped off the Social Economy team for a day in Fafanlap village. Here they interviewed the Kepala Desa (village head) and other village leaders about marine resources and fishing techniques: there is a live-reef fish trade, and there are in fact groupers and Napoleon wrasse in holding pens, but they claim that these are caught by hand-line; the cyanide fishermen coming especially from Sorong. The team also interviewed traders about marine resource use, saw and photographed sheds of teripang (a.k.a. bêche-de-mêre), biolola (trochus shell), and batulagang (green-snail shell, used for buttons).

The speedboat penetrated several kilometers up the Gam river today, with much good botanising done directly from the boats. This seriously impressed the vegetation team, who have spent the last four days stepping carefully on the knife-edged karst rocks of eastern Misool.

The turtle team visited several beaches, one of which had 21 green turtle nests, several of which had been raided by monitor lizards or people.

Divers visited several sites to the south-east, and found some magnificent coral gardens.
The film crew visited one of these exposed coral gardens at full low tide, and witnessed two local men hunting fish in the exposed tidal pools. The men used akar bori ( a derris root poison) to stun the fish, and scampered over the reef with long spears to catch them. When we reviewed the video on the boat, the team commented on the timelessness of the scene - we could have been watching events happening 10,000 years ago. ("Except they're wearing underpants").