Rumput Laut in Lombok

Yesterday I was standing on the bright blue shores of Gerupuk Bay in South Lombok, watching seaweed farmers carry their harvest from sea to land. I was meeting with their foreman, a nice chap who allowed me to take some pictures of Lombok seaweed for our forthcoming agri-catalogue. The seaweed was about to be trucked to Sumbawa, so I caught them at a nice moment.



The farmers were a happy bunch, all smiley and talkative with me. I guess the seaweed harvest was looking good and the market is right.



In Bahasa Indonesia seaweed means “rumput laut” (seagrass; rumput=grass, laut=sea) which in English translates to seagrass. Technically speaking that's the wrong word. Because seaweed is an algae form, they are NOT plants.

In English there is seagrass and seaweed. Seagrass denotes the species of marine organisms that ARE plants and, like plants, have different sexes, produce flowers, fruits and seeds. They enhance the ecosystems they live in by providing food and shelter to many animals and organisms.

One of the animals heavily dependent on seagrass for food is the dugong (also known as sea cow), the only strictly-marine herbivorous mammal.



Dugongs also live in Indonesia. There were probably populations of dugongs in Lombok not too long ago, but I haven’t heard of any now. They do still live not too far east of Lombok actually, for example near the island of Flores. They are listed as a “vulnerable to extinction” species by the IUCN, due to hunting, habitat degradation, and fishing-related fatalities (such as mutilations on their bodies from being hit by ships).

Anyways. Back to seaweed. Seaweed, unlike seagrass, reproduces via spores (not seeds) and serves fewer bio-functions in its environment. In an evolutionary sense, seaweed is less developed and more primitive than seagrass.

Seagrass and algae beds together form an important ecosystem, and both should be maintained. But the balance has been tipped in favor of algae of late. Seaweed and seagrass in fact have a non-symbiotic relationship; in areas where seagrass dies and decays - often through human disturbances like eutrophication, mechanical destruction of habitat, and overfishing – algal blooms occur. These are free-floating micro and macro algae, which obscure the water, weakening the sunlight infiltration and making photosynthesis for watergrass difficult. As this happens, the algal blooms accelerate and have a positive feedback effect on seagrass loss, and a complete regime shift from seagrass to algal dominance may occur.

Lombok has both seaweed and seagrass areas, but the areas of seagrass I’ve seen weren’t real meadows but just patches of seagrass. In the shallow areas of Tanjung’an Bay I’ve directly swum over many of these. But they are very limited. I am guessing the seagrass areas have been shrinking more and more in Lombok, just as elsewhere.



But for the marine farmers of Gerupuk Bay, seaweed is an important commodity. Seaweed is highly prized for the extraction of its gelatinous substances, like carrageenan, which is used in the food and pharma-industry. Most seaweed from Indonesia, which this year has surpassed the Philippines as the largest seaweed producer in the world, is shipped to Hong Kong and Taiwan to my knowledge.

Seaweed in Gerupuk, Lombok, grows on long lines. Typically, seaweed does not grow a real root system like seagrass (plants), but has “holdfasts” to attach itself to hard substrates like rocks and shells. But the farmers here attach short seaweed sections by rope to the long lines, so they just float at sea anyways. I’ve seen two types of seaweed harvested here yesterday: one is a large, thick and brown-green variety called “Maumere” (because it stems from said area in East Indonesia) and another is a variety from the Philippines called Tambalang, which occurs both in red and green color.



When the individual sections have grown to about 100 grams the transplanting begins.
Seaweed in Lombok is actually “transplanted” to waters in Sumbawa, where it is allowed to mature fully. An individual seaweed section there may grow to about 1.5kg. One long line with its multiple nodes will carry a total of about 25kg of seaweed for its final harvest before sale.

And that concludes my seaweed post for today. Apologies if this was a little technical. This stuff is more interesting to see in person. If you rent a boat to take you out to one of the surf breaks in Gerupuk Bay you will actually drive right past the floating structures in the water there. There are many more out at sea; I was windsurfing zig-zag through a field of them once. Or they were lobster farms. I forget. I was paying attention to other things, like how to get back to shore.

Being Beaten Over The Head With A Rainbow

Another Lombok beach with not a soul on it. This one in Ekas on the south-east coast.

You’re wondering, “well, wasn’t there at least a photographer there?” Nope.

How this picture came about: I had to run up the hill, set the camera to auto-picture mode, which gave me 10 seconds to jump off the point of the cliff, swim a short distance, and climb out of the water looking as casual as I can. True story told by a liar.

I’m tired of the blue lagoons. The lonely coves. The palm trees. The white sand beaches all to myself. Too much beauty. It’s like the Englishman Russell Brand said about his short stint in Hawaii shooting a movie there, “yes it was beautiful for a week or two, but after that it just felt like being beaten over the head with a rainbow.” Painstakingly beautiful.

I need a change. I want to be a sardine in a box on an overcrowded Italian beach and fight with other beachgoers over the corner of my towel they are sitting on. Or tell them that they just threw sand on my bags. That they're standing in my sun. And curse at the Mojito inebriated drunkards who stumble over my legs. Not to mention the exorbitant entrance fee I want to pay to set foot on the beach in the first place.

Folks, time’s running out. I’m telling you, y’all come visit me while you still can. The resorts are planned. Development is coming. Hurry before this landscape has changed.

I'm trying to break your heart

When they see a "bule" (foreigner), most kids in Praya will just call out "Hello Mister", regardless of whether you are a man or woman, incidentally. The "mister" part is often exclaimed in somewhat truculent manner, and though it is not meant as such, it can get quite annoying. These are not the sweet kids.

But there are many sweet kids. In fact, once you get to know them, they're all sweet. In my old neighboorhood, i helped the kids with their math or English homework sometimes. They were incredibly sweet kids, i even loved the kid of my old landlord, who was a bit of a fallout character himself. i don't know if it's school or the "bule" they liked, but they were always really enthusiastic about doing homework with me. They even knocked on my door on the 1st of January at 7 a.m. in the morning to get help with their homework. I was rolling around in bed trying to pretend i wasn't home, but they persisted until i opened the door.What incredible resolve and resolution for the new year!

In my current neighboorhood I haven't made friends with the kids yet. I haven't told them my name either or helped them with homework. i want to sleep in on the 1st of January. i figure if i don't get to know them, it'll be easier to say no. So til now anyways, to the kids, i'm still "Hello Mister", yes, in that truculent speech. (Note to all Praya teachers: don't teach the kids to say "Hello Mister" to bules, it's annoying.)
I do like to play pranks, and one of these days amybe, i'm gonna stop while i drive past them and tell them my real name is Sauron. Imagine, all tourists were henceforth greeted with "Hello Sauron". And i started the trend!

Some messed up sh*t

If you've ever had a sea urchin stuck in your finger, you too will become more careful in planning your swims according to tide charts. The spines of a seaurchin lodge themselves deeply in your flesh, even if you've just brushed them slightly. They are pretty hard to get out. I rubbed red onion juice over my pinkie because I couldn't surgically remove them without making a mess of my finger. The red onion eased the swelling.

I've seen many seaurchins before but this one happened a while back and I was a newbie so to speak. It was afternoon and I was swimming into shore with some waves and surf pushing me in, when I noticed with some consternation that I was swimming right over a bed of seaurchins. And just then it was too late already.

If you're in Kuta, don't follow the tourist guidebooks' advice on swimming schedules. A lot of tourist guidebooks will tell you that the best times to swim in Kuta bay, Tanjuan or Mawun are the morning hours til noon. They say that's when the water-level is up. Now that is non-sense. There can be low tides at any time of the day. It depends on the moon phase, the position of the sun and rotation of the earth, and the shape of the ocean floor. Most places around the world experience 2 high tides and 2 low tides a day (semidiurnal) or 1 high tide and 1 low tide a day (diurnal). These tides follow a schedule of about 6 hour shifts. But not exactly 6 hours.

See, the moon orbits the Earth at the same times as the Earth rotates on its axis, so it takes slightly more than a day—about 24 hours and 50 minutes—for the Moon to return to the same position in the sky. This is why semidiurnal and diurnal tides come in with a bit of delay, like 6 hours and some squeezed minutes or 12 hours and some minutes. During the course of a year, high and low tide will pass through every hour of the day. Saying that there is always low-tide in one place before noon all year round is rubbish.

That's the clue, especially in Kuta Lombok, it's really messed up here, but I can't tell you why. Magicseaweed, the trusted surfer website that most people here consult, also doesn't think there are static tides. However, they suggest that Kuta Lombok, unlike Kuta Bali or other places, goes through irregular tide shifts which are neither diurnal nor semidiurnal tides but "mixed tides", with sometimes 10 hour shifts and more! Based on my experience of swimming in Kuta, the tide predictions on Magicseaweed aren't spot-on for Kuta-Lombok exactly, so I look at tide charts for Bali too and concoct my own ideas of tides down here.

I talked to a dive operator and they didn't know why it was all so weird either. Don't trust the guidebooks. Don't trust anyone.

Which came first?

"Let's think of eggs. They have no legs.

Chicken come from eggs. Well, but they have legs.

Now eggs also come from chicken, here the plot thickens.

But eggs with legs, whence do they come from?

Oh what a conundrum!"

The other day I was sitting around with some kids. I asked the kids some elementary questions, like the one on the origin of the chicken. They went round in circles with their responses. First it was the egg. I asked them what laid the egg? Then they said it was the chicken, and so on. I wasn't trying to pull anyone's chain, but they got all irritated and stirred up. They did not think it was funny. I forbade myself to ever bring up again the chicken egg topic. It's a cultural thing.

Na zdraví!

My Czech friend Ales told me this Christmas that whenever he's in India he drinks a shot of hard liquor in the morning when he wakes up, and in the evening before he goes to bed. He says he's never had any gastric problems when in India, even eating the food at street kiosks. I've taken to heart his good suggestion and will gulp down a shot of Gin before and after my swims at Praya's murky swimming pool. My swimming sessions are now probably harder training for my liver than my arms.

Oh and Na zdraví! to my Czech friend Anna who got married this week.

There I was...

There I was... parading with my BAPPEDA office friends and thousands of Sasak at Nyale Festival this Wednesday in Kuta. Nyale takes place every year in February in commemoration of the Princess Mandalika who, a long time ago, when faced with a cohort of enamoured princes who all wanted to marry her, threw herself into the ocean off the rocks at Pantai Seger.

She thereby forestalled the possibility of war between the rivaling and potentially discontented parties, and ensured that she would be there for everyone and always... in the form of the waves that roll in and out of the beaches bringing in swarms of Nyale worms once a year. The Nyale worms are the corpses of little spaghetti-like oceanic creatures that, after spawning out at sea, get washed onto shore on 1 or 2 days a year. If you think about it, geo-biologically speaking, Nyale is really quite a remarkable event. A good Nyale harvest (the Sasak like to wade into the water at dusk and collect the worms) is also said to herald good agricultural harvests for the coming year.

Note the mascara on me.

We were all lined up and ready to stroll in procession But we had to wait two hours in the sun until the Vice-Buppati arrived. The costumes were very hot. When I saw the masquerade of small kids strolling through the finish-line some 3 hours later, I felt so sorry for them, they were so tired. Although we were all pretty tired due to the heat and long wait, the parade was actually really fun. There were even parashooters falling from the sky.

I grew up in the Rhineland, and the Nyale parade yesterday and the vibrant energy on the street reminded me a little bit of the "Karnevalszug". But yesterday, I couldn't help noticing comically, how we were more people in the parade than we had spectators.