TANGERANG, Indonesia — Joy sat by the seashore on the outskirts of Jakarta patching up his fishing nets, repairing each tear with practiced stitches while a clutch of women shelled green mussels as the afternoon wore on. “Later on, at 4, we’ll head out to sea,” said Joy, who usually earns up to 500,000 rupiah ($32) from a single catch. However, like many here on the shoreline of Indonesia’s capital city, Joy worries that a dearth of fish, and the changes unfolding near his home, suggest this livelihood exists on borrowed time. As each year passes, fishers throughout the northern coast of Indonesia’s main central island of Java must venture farther out to sea for a viable catch to sustain their families. Fishing communities around the world face an incoming tide of ocean acidification and sea temperature rises, which threaten fish stocks, a crucial source of protein and income in these villages. Yet the fishing community here in Ketapang, a village in the Tangerang district that makes up part of the Greater Jakarta area, also has to contend with a crude bamboo fence hindering access to the Java Sea. When the bamboo barrier first appeared, obstructing fishers from leaving the harbor, a flotilla of fishing boats coalesced in its removal. Local fishers said people working on behalf of a developer replaced the barricade soon enough, this time brandishing a letter of authorization from the village government. “You can’t see it at night and the boat can hit it,” Joy explained.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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