This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @marc-allaria: REPORTAGE - SULAWESIE - Stop#7 - Tout droit...!

^{As my primary language is not English, there are probably some mistakes in my translation.}

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but Marc Allaria (@marc-allaria), a French guy.

Straight Ahead

One of the most beautiful animals of the oceans

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Selayar is right at the bow of Aurora. To tell the truth it has been there for a few days since I saw it from my previous anchorage. The navigation is not very long and makes me land in Pengaa, the mini-agglomeration of the island.

I drop the anchor in front of the harbor in the middle of the boats of fishermen that have come to sell their booty and to find some rest there after several days spent at sea. Of course, the glances and the questions with respect to the boat next door do not delay. The fishermen staring at my "modern" sailboat with a single sailor on board, and I, trying to understand their life at 4 or 5 on such small boats. From there to meet all on the same boat, it will not have taken more than an hour!

Fishing with a cast net

I arrive on board with some treats and many questions. On deck, a few dozen shark fins dry in the sun. As everyone knows, shark fin fishing has become a global practice. I specify shark fin fishing and not shark fishing, because it is the shark fins that the Chinese market buys at a high price. A market so lush, that a real commercial spider web has been woven by them in order to retrieve fins from all over Asia, Melanesia and now to Madagascar. Unbelievable! Today, even the fisherman of a village isolated from our parables, is informed of this market, its ins and outs ...

The seamy side of this fishery is that fishermen do not usually bother with shark meat. They cut the fins to the catch, and throw the shark alive and without a fin in the water. The agony is slow for this paralyzed body plunging to the bottom unable to move, so to breathe. The images and reports have been numerous in recent years and each of you has certainly had the opportunity to watch.

Shark fins to dry

So obviously, the sight of these fins drying on the deck cools me for a moment. I can already hear "dirty fishermen", "bastards of Chinese," coming out of the shiny lips of ointment, of most of our eco-activists. The same ones who are buying organic food, go to their green shop most often at the wheel of a big SUV, forgetting that to grow organic for everyone we would have to cut more trees. The same ones who forget that if he had not made the 4 kids sitting in their back seat with their tablets in hand we would not have arrived there. Those who store their food in 3 freezers at 2000 watts each. Those who need only 8l of water to brush their teeth and take only 3 showers of 200l per day. By the way, do these glossy lips know the composition of the stick or the lipstick applied to them every day? The liver oil of ... sharks, Bingo! Marketing, when you take us for idiots, you do not do it halfway!

And then of course, when we find ourselves in front of men, we end up discussing. "You have to live well," explains one of them, telling me about his village and his family. What to reply to that? It is not me, beautiful lover of the Nature, who since my sailing boat stuffed with gray energies, metals, and chemicals, will take the high morality ground! They say they also keep the shark meat, which I checked in their cans prepared for salting meat, where a turtle is drying as well.

Net and reefs...

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At the edge of the beach, this time it's a dolphin that I find hooked on a line and that will certainly make a meal for a family. The picture is even more untenable for me. I do not even have the courage to take a picture. But again, dolphins, turtles, cows or pigs, not to mention the millions of hectares of trees cut to grow our greenery and our organic soy milk, we must resign ourselves to admit that the man has based his survival on the destruction of its environment, and that the outcome is known to all ... But that no one is worried about the planet. In the end, it will still be there!

Next thought will be more positive, I promise!

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fsfblender (43) 6 years ago

Terrible. it is only about the money and no longer thinking about the fate of the animale. Yes hopefully beter news next time.

$0.00

2 votes

meenu1 (27) 6 years ago

Nice post
Good luck

1 vote

yudiakbar (30) 6 years ago

The picture is good the bast moment

silabus (27) 6 years ago (edited)

Great article, I have seen the same tragic condition in Flores. Fishermen do some kind of great hunting of whales once a year as a part of tradition with one condition only 2-3 whales allowed to be hunt for feed the whole village. But, when Japanese market searching for whale meat (Japanese fishermen got strict rule of whale hunting, because the West condemnation), now almost all fishermen from Indonesia, Chinese and Japanese start to make Flores their hunting ground for whale. Excessive hunting become a major problem now.

SULAWESI: Stright ahead ...!, by @marc-allaria (translated from French)

This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @marc-allaria: REPORTAGE - SULAWESIE - Stop#7 - Tout droit...!

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but Marc Allaria (@marc-allaria), a French guy.

Straight Ahead