6.3.3 Sampan handlining and netting
Small outrigger boats sampan with a total length of less than 5m are common in West Sumatra. Traditionally these were powered by sail or paddle but
most fishers now use a long-tail machine 5-7 HP. Those that continue to use paddle or sail generally fish alone and tend to be older ‘hobby’ fishermen who
may also use their boats to paddle up the river to their rice fields. The two main gears used by sampan fishers are gillnetting and handlining, either trolling or
stationary reef fishing. Many sampan fishers in West Sumatra set their nets before sunrise and retrieve them shortly afterwards. In some locations the day’s fishing is
over when the catch is landed before 9 am. Others gillnetters return in the morning and then fish in the afternoon. A third group of gillnetters fish through the night
and return in the morning. Handliners from Sungai Pinang typically go to sea before sunrise and return around 2 pm. The majority of sampan owners have one
boat and use it for themselves. They are often accompanied by one or two crew members and the catch is shared equally with each person and ‘the boat’ receiving
one share. Thirty nine respondents worked on a sampan, with 31 of these owning their own sampan and the remaining 8 working as labourers. The owners could be
further divided into those who predominantly fished using gillnets n=18 and those that used handlines n=13.
The differences between owners and crew are much less pronounced in the
sampan sector Figure 6.5. Only in the physical field bottom right panel is
there a clear distinction between sampan owners and crew and even this is much less prominent than in the bagan and payang sector. There are two reasons for
this. Buying a sampan is relatively cheap 500-600US and even equipping it with a long-tail machine and net is only in the order of 1000US. Unlike owners
of bagan, and to a lesser extent payang owners, sampan owners are not thought of as wealthy people by the rest of the community. This means that unlike other boat
owners they do not normally have other land-based physical capital so, for example, only 5 out of 31 sampan owners has a motorbike. The second reason
why there is not the gulf in physical capital between sampan owners and crew is that because sampans are much cheaper than larger boats, there is much greater
fluidity between owners and crew. Six of the eight sampan crew had previously
owned a sampan but because of a difficult economic situation ekonomi macet they had either had to sell the boat or, more typically, had been unable to replace
the boat when it was worn out. For some it had simply come down to a choice between replacing a boat or enabling their children to go to school. Many owners
of aging sampans reported that they were in a similar situation and may be forced within the next few months to move back into the crew sector as they had no
savings to replace their boat.
Figure 6.5: Sampan scores from MDS projected on a bad 0 to good 100 x-axis
for all six fields of the analysis. The y-axis shows the similaritydissimilarity scores. Circle = crew members, square = sampan owner that gillnets, triangle =
sampan owner that handlines.
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Natural
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Financial
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Human
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Institutional
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Social
-40 -20
20 40
20 40
60 80
100
Physical
In the financial and human fields Figure 6.7, top right and middle left panels
there were no clear differences between sampan owners and crew although the few sampan owners that do score above 60 in both these fields are invariably
owners of gillnets, who are committed to saving for the future. One of these individuals worked as crew on larger boats until he was 30 and then bought his
own second-hand sampan with 400US that a fish trader had borrowed on his behalf from the bank. Having successfully paid that off he borrowed a further
600 US from the same fish trader and has almost paid this off as well. His boat is powered by two second-hand machines and although he normally sells the fish
through that agent at the auction, he does not feel trapped in a patron-client relationship. The willingness to take a risk by borrowing capital and move from a
crew member to a sampan owner, coupled with his commitment to paying the loan off as quickly as possible has enabled this individual to move towards
resilience. The use of two second-hand machines also helps him to avoid the sudden shock of one failing and instantly needing to find the 150US to replace it.
Individuals like this, who have demonstrated underlying human capacity need to be supported with financial and physical capital. These kinds of people are highly
motivated and determined to make a better life for themselves and their families. Barring sickness or natural disasters, his lifehood profile is growing more
resilient. For others, who lack those financial management skills, they will need considerable supervision both from external change agents like extension officers
andor from membership of a group to grow in human capacity.
In the natural, institutional and social fields there was no clear
difference on the bad-good scale between crew and owners or between fishers using nets and fishers using handlines. However within individual attributes
differences were apparent. While the sampan sector in general reported that catches had declined over the last 20 years, this was especially evident in the
handlining sector. All 13 respondents reported you could not catch the same volu
me of fish as previously with comments such as “you cannot find large groupers now” and “we used to catch a whole basket, now it’s a 5 kilo tin of
paint”. For both netters and handliners, the price of fish had increased as the
resource got scarcer but fishers from this sector complained that this was not
compensating them for the decline in catch value and they were finding it harder to save, “it’s no use having a high price for a fish you can’t catch” Both crew
n=6 and sampan owners n=22 tended to own or borrow rice fields and besides rice, 29 of the sampan sector had some other kind of diversification including
activities such as collecting firewood, raising goats and cows, small household kiosks, wives making cakes and other crop farming. These activities have
different roles depending on the needs of the family at those times. Rice is normally stored and then eaten as needed but could equally be sold if money was
needed to repair a boat or machine. This degree of diversification did contrast the sampan sector with both the bagan and payang sectors. In the bagan sector, 36
n=14 of crew members and for payang, 58 n=7 of crew had no alternative livelihood and depended entirely on catches for their household income. In
contrast just 8 n=3 of sampan respondents depended on catches and even one of these three had just 2 months previously changed from being a bagan crew
member to owning a sampan. His story was significant because he was 38 years old and had just changed after more than ten years fishing as a bagan crew
member. He saved up money and also borrowed from his family and since he had owned his own sampan reports that his income has increased and he is enjoying
the freedom and flexibility that being a boat owner gives him. Other sampan owners had similar stories of using their time as a bagan or payang crew member
to save money so that they could buy their own boat. One family saved for seven years and were finally able to buy their own sampan. During this seven years,
their children were still small and their family did not face any disaster which could have cleaned out their savings. Having bought the boat, they are finding
their income is higher than previously and are continuing to save to improve their business in the future. They had a window of opportunity to save while their
household expenditure was low and they have managed to move towards resilience.
Of all the sectors sampan owners were at greatest risk of having boats destroyed by large waves or carried away by the current. Eight of the 39 had
experienced this but seven of them had been able to subsequently buy another boat. Mostly they worked as crew to save up the capital to do this.
As with the bagan and payang sectors there were high leverage scores for the attributes ‘state of coastal resources’ and ‘natural disasters’ Figure 6.6 in the
natural field. The attribute ‘personal interventions’ in the institutional field exerted
a greater leverage in the sampan sector than for bagan and payang respondents. The main reason for this was that most sampan respondents 7 out of 39 were
from Sungai Pinang and for the other institutional attributes their responses were fairly uniform. Generally, Sungai Pinang has received very little institutional
support ov er the last five years so attributes such as ‘advocacy’, ‘extension
officer’, and ‘training’ were scored equally poorly by almost all respondents leaving the largest source of variation in responses to come from whether they had
received personal interventions from the government or not.
Figure 6.6:
Leverage exerted on the x-axis scores by each attribute for the
sampan sector.
5 10
15 Geographical_isolation
Sheltered_mooring State_of_coastal_resources
State_of_land_resources Natural_disasters
Fishing_income Ability_to_save
Collateral Origin_of_loan
Goods_on_credit Savings
Remittances Alternative_income
Desire_to_save Market_awareness
Hard_working Occupational_multiplicity_skills
Risk Wife_working
No_of_children Education_aspiration
Education_reality Retirement_planning
Household_expenditure Husband_spend_consumables
Extension_officer Village_interventions
Personal_interventions Advocacy
Training_empowerment Community_spirit
Trust Leadership
Help_when_crisis Right_to_speak_out
Sanctions_rule_of_law Boat_ownership
Fishing_gear Other_asset_owned
Processing_adding_value Ice_availability
Housing Fish_auction
Natural Field
Instit. Field
Social Field
Finance Field
Human Field
Physical Field
6.3.4 Beach seine pukat tepi