The threats of evolutionary governance for Indonesian lobster fisheries

We have to keep our juvenile (baby) lobsters from the poachers. It puts the lobster stock in jeopardy and causes high national income losses

Susi Pudjiastuti, the former Indonesian Minister of Fisheries and marine affairs is against the increasing juvenile lobster activity in Indonesia. She even imposed crustacean catch ban regulation.

(Susi Pudjiastuti releasing poached juvenile lobsters. Source: KKP)

This rule forbids fishermen and businessmen to harvest and sell lobsters overseas given that such an exploitation has deteriorated the lobster population in the wild. Before we discuss further this issue. People may ask, why do lobsters matters for people in Indonesia? To give you a hint, coastal communities in Indonesia have relied on lobsters for generating incomes. The high international price of lobster gives a lot of fortune to them. Lobsters enable them to feed fishers’ families. Besides, from selling lobsters, they can fund their children to the high education. Lobsters, in this sense, can be called as “the blue gold” from the sea. Its existence is as comparatively valuable as the real gold and the “black gold” (oil). The difference is lobsters are renewable when no fishing, they recover their populations themselves provided that the carrying capacity of the environment underpins this stock recovery.

Given that Indonesian lobsters have been widely known in China and other seafood nations, Vietnam are establishing its mariculture industries for lobsters. What I mean by seafood nations here are countries that already consume a high amount of seafood products. Korea and Japan are among them in retrospect. The industrialization of lobster aquaculture in Vietnam directly means that they require the high number of juvenile lobsters from Indonesia. This lobster demand has a strong relationship with juvenile poaching. Besides, it changes the practice of lobsters fisheries from catching adult lobsters to juvenile lobsters. This transformation is where all the environmental and social problems comes to exist with lobster fisheries as mentioned above.

In 2020, the rule of the game has changed. It is under the new leader’s regime in the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Affairs. Edy Prabowo, current Indonesian Minister of Fisheries and Marine, has legitimate the juvenile lobster export. Under his regime, people can sell their juvenile lobsters with the minimum price of 5,000 rupiah. This decision is without no political agenda in it. Many local media have been connecting this notion of, what I describe, “open-access lobsters”, with his political connections. Many political elites, cronies of Eddy, are interested in the value of the blue gold. They establish businesses which collect juvenile lobsters to be sent to Vietnam. In a way, opening the faucet of export becomes the green light of the privilege minority in Indonesia to generate revenues and wealth. Further, this economic power is used to win future elections, albeit at the expense of lobster stock degradation.

This evolutionary governance from banning to opening the gate of juvenile overfishing has polarized the perspective of poor coastal communities. In general, they are blinded by the fact that it is easy to earn money from juvenile lobsters. They support this change with open hands. The educated people such as researchers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are mostly against the permission of juvenile lobster effects. They argue that the selling and buying juvenile lobsters only give a shor-term gratification. In the long-term, it will put the poor coastal communities in a greater danger together with the extinction of the lobsters in the wild. At the same time, it only benefits Vietnamese lobster farmers. Raising juvenile lobsters to adult lobsters can give a higher profit to the farmers in comparison with that of only selling juvenile lobsters.

This orchestration of lobsters have been fueled by the humans’ ego in order to be filthy rich. Yet, it does not take into account the welfare of lobsters in the wild. Not only that, juvenile lobsters are often packed into 200 ml mineral water bottle. At the same time, the existence of new regulations also have transformed the relationship between Vietnam and Indonesia from foes to allies. All is to take out the blue gold, the lobsters from their natural habitats. This entirety depicts that the new governance only becomes the tool of the powerful people to put the powerless people into dilusion. They promise that exporting the blue gold will better the income of the under privileged coastal communities. In reality, it catalyzes the destruction of lobster populations instead. This environmental crisis will make the poor coastal communities poorer. A classic story of tragedy in common has repeated themselves only because of our greed to our mother nature.