Antara News, Friday, August 27, 2010 04:51 WIB
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The rich fishery resources in Bintan Island waters are believed to be the motive behind the recent sea border incident with Malaysia in which three Indonesian fishery officers were arrested by the neigboring country`s police.
"The waters (around Bintan) are rich fishing grounds as two different currents, hot and cold, meet there. This condition enables production of phyto-planktons for fish to feed on," said Eddy Sudartanto, head of the Marine Resources and Fisheries Ministry`s Data, Statistics and Information bureau, said here Thursday.
Such a marine condition, he said, in fact was not only to be found on the Indonesian side of the border but also on the Malasyian side. He hinted that this condition may have encouraged foreign fishermen to intrude into Indonensian waters.
He was referring to the incident on August 13 when three Indonesian Marine and Fisheries patrolmen were arrested by Malaysian Marine Police inside Indonesian marine territory. They were caught when performing their duty in catching Malaysian fisherman deemed to have fished illegally.
According to data collected in 2010 by the ministry, a total of 112 foreign boats, including a number from Malaysia, were caught poaching in Indonesian waters up to last June.
Research conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2003 had found that there were large areas of shallow water around Bintan with the water level in many places at low tide only reaching a height of 1-5 meters providing excellent locations for fish traps and for development of fish farming using pens or for mollusk farming using off-bottom methods.
The water color observed was uniformly light green with low transparency with underwater visibility of 0.5-1.5 m indicating the existence of moderately high phytoplankton levels.
Bintan waters were also believed to be the habitat of expensive fish, including several species of groupers (kerapu) that include epinephelus and Plectropomus and four species of tauvina, malabaricus, maculatus and leopardus.
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