11/06/2024
We don't usually like posting pictures of the shark processing plant where the sharks landed in Lombok are sent to for processing and export. But eleven years of having run The Dorsal Effect's snorkelling trips as a form of alternative livelihood for the ex shark fishermen also means that we learn to understand the shark fishing industry on a deeper level, along with its complexities.
A gunny sack bag full of processed shark fins yields about SGD40,000, to this day. Honestly that's not the kind of money we can and will pay the ex shark fishermen for taking tourists out snorkelling instead.
Conservation, welfare and alternative livelihoods are all good starting points for wanting to run something with good intentions. But the many years of knowing the locals in Lombok and feeling for them, of learning the layers and complexities of the shark fishing industry, of appreciating the science-backed policies that the good work of shark data collection at the Tanjung Luar fish market's shark landing site, brings bittersweet thoughts and perhaps even a deeper disgrunt towards capitalism.
We can't take humans out of the equation in any conservation issue. I still very much am constantly torn over how economics has to drive what we do, while decrying capitalism in the same breath.
Is there ever truly a balance between animal conservation and supporting local communities well and wholesomely without exploitation, if capitalism remains the existing system in the background?
Is human greed inherent such that no other systems can triumph capitalism?
Is sustainability purely a human-centric dirty word?
What needs to stop? But can it ever be stopped?
