Mexican artist (and cultural commentator) Miguel Covarrubias
(Island of Bali) ignited the world’s love affair with
Bali with his vivid impressions of a pre-modern, pre-tourist
Bali—forever frozen in time—in the 1930s: “The
mountains with their lakes and rivers are the home of the
gods and the sources of the land’s fertility, and they
stand for everything that is holy and healthy. To the Balinese,
everything that is high is good and powerful. It is therefore
natural that the sea, lower than the lowest point of land--with
sharks and barracuda infesting the waters, and deadly sea-snakes
and poisonous fish living among the treacherous coral reefs--should
be considered as tenget, or magically dangerous, the home
of the evil spirits.
Few Balinese know how to swim and they rarely venture into
the sea except to bathe near the shallow beaches, and then
they go only a few feet from the shore. There are small settlements
of fishermen who brave the malarial coasts of Kuta, Sanur,
Benua, and Ketewel, but in general, fishing is done on a small
scale--either with casting-nets, or in beautiful prows shaped
like fantastic elephant-fish (gadja-mina) with elegant, stylized
trunks and eyes to see at night. With their triangular sails
apex downward, they go far out to sea at sunset to procure
the giant sea-turtles required at the frequent banquets of
this feast-loving people.
Most Balinese seldom eat fish and remain essentially a rice-eating
race. Their repugnance for the sea may be due to the same
religious fear of the supernatural that prevents them from
climbing to the summit of the great mountains. The Balinese
feel that the heights are for the gods, the middle world for
humans, and the depths and low points for the spirits of the
underworld. They dread the unholy loneliness of the beaches
haunted by demons, and they believe that the coastline is
under the influence of Djero Gede Metjaling, the Fanged Giant,
who lives on the barren island of Nusa Penida. They are one
of the rare island peoples in the world who turn their eyes
not outward to the waters, but upward to the mountain tops.”
Covarrubias found a well-delineated, well-built, Bali-Hindu
theological universe consisting of three distinct levels:
the revered mountain peaks above are the abode of the gods,
the middle world of earth is the province of humans, and the
shunned, mysterious sea below is the haunt of evil spirits
and negative powers (yet also a tool and place of purification,
as it receives the cremated ashes of the dead and purifies
their spirits before they go to heaven). Singular among island
peoples, the Balinese are reluctant fishermen: the island
of the gods has no seafaring tradition, no history of exploratory
or migratory oceanic voyages, and minimal participation in
national and international maritime trade. Except for locals
who wade out onto the coral reefs at sunset at low tide to
troll for fish using rustic bamboo poles and lanterns in Pemuteran,
central Lovina, Perancak, and Sanur, most of Bali’s
fishermen are migrants from Java or Lombok. They bravely navigate
Bali’s hazardous, inhospitable, perimeter coastline
(offering few natural, sheltered harbors or deep water anchorages—buttressed
by a moat of dangerous breakers, coral reefs, and wave-cut
cliffs punctuating the craggy shoreline). They go out every
day in colorfully painted, traditional, small jukung (double
outrigger canoes) built in timeless fishing villages and ports
like Amed, Padang Bai, Lovina, Kusamba, Singaraja, Jimbaran
Bay, Pengambengan Bay, Kedonganan, Benoa Bay, and Candi Dasa.
The traditional Balinese jukung is made out of a local wood
called kayu (wood) ganggangan, grown in the Karangasem villages
of Manggis and Slumbung. Stabilized by bamboo struts, it follows
an unchanged, supremely seaworthy, ideally functional, 7,000-year-old
design. Mythological, crocodile-like faces are carved into
the sweeping prow in the belief that these frightening, open-jawed,
monster faces (sudang) will scare away the harmful forces:
their large, bulging, forward-looking eyes help the vessel
to navigate at night and in bad weather, to avoid dangerous
coral reefs, and to spot fish. Wooden jukung in sister island
Nusa Lembongan (part of Klungkung Regency) have always been
carved out of huge, whole pohon mangga (mango tree) or pohon
waru (beach hibiscus tree) logs. These old-forest wood resources
have become scarce due to years of promiscuous, unsustainable
cutting and new fishing jukung are now built out of multi-layered,
coated fibreglass instead. Only moderate size jukung (requiring
smaller, younger tree logs) are still made out of traditional
local timber.
The warm tropical seas surrounding Bali shelter a god-given
orgy of equatorial sea life: octopus and lobster off Uluwatu
Beach, sea urchins in Sanur, and shrimp and colossal-sized
fiddler crabs with rose red/white claws in Benoa Bay. Kedonganan
locals dig in the sand near the water’s edge for imis
(small cockles) to be used for soup. Puffer fish and pipefish
populate the creeks meandering through Benoa Bay’s mangrove
forests. Underwater wildlife blooms along the coral reefs
off Candi Dasa and the Batu Tiga (Three Rocks). Fish-heavy
boats slide up every day onto Lipah Beach in Amed: hotel managers
roll up their sarongs to wade into the water and inspect the
boat’s catch—including red snapper, barracuda,
tuna, and mahi-mahi. Amed Bay’s spectacular coral wall
teases distant divers and snorkelers with surgeon, cardinal,
parrot, damsel fish, and dogtooth tuna.
Bali’s inland rivers are alive with common river crabs,
creek eels, goby fish (native to Bali and fond of stony rivers),
gurami (a freshwater fish similar to bass), and several species
of prawns in lowland rivers. Balinese men go fishing in local
lakes and rivers (even in populous Kuta) to snare freshwater
mujair—delicious grilled and served whole. Guppies (native
to Trinidad) are ubiquitous in every lake, river, canal, and
rice field, while tilapia fish (introduced from Africa) are
found in lakes and rivers. Aquatic life has been artificially
injected into Bali’s eco-system since the mid-1990s:
a commercial fish farm company established ponds in Tabanan
Regency to breed bandeng and kerapu (grouper) for the export
market. Bandeng are large milkfish commercially grown in saltwater
ponds along the coast in southern Bali: they grow to a generous
size in captivity, and are sold to Java. (In contrast, nener--tiny,
edible white fish--are young, freshly caught milkfish, commonly
travelling in thousand-strong schools).
