High Waves Reaching 4 Meters Make Lebak Fishermen Not Go To Sea

Illustration of fishermen (Photo by alphafissas on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Traditional fishermen on the south coast of Lebak Regency, Banten have not been to sea for the past week because of storms and high waves that reach four meters.

"All traditional fishermen here do not go to sea", said the head of the Bina Muara Sejahtera Binuangeun Fisherman Cooperative, Lebak Regency, Wading, Tuesday, November 22, as reported by Antara.

In the last few days, the weather in the southern waters of Banten has been unfriendly, apart from storms and high waves, catches have also decreased.

They prefer not to go to sea to avoid sea accidents.

"If fishermen are forced to go to sea, they will lose money, because there is no balance between income and operational costs for purchasing fuel oil (BBM)", he said.

According to him, as long as they don't go to sea, they carry out net repair activities and among them gather around the local Fish Auction Place (TPI) to monitor the weather returning to normal.

Currently, continued Wading, fishermen who usually catch various fish, such as tuna, squid, layur, mackerel, tuna, baby lobster, and others, are now not going to sea.

If the weather is normal, they can make fish auction transactions of around IDR4-5 billion with a catch of 250 tons per month, but currently, the fishermen are not going to sea due to the bad weather.

"We have hundreds of fishermen members and are now unemployed", he said.

Head of Capacity Building for Small Fishermen of the Lebak Regency Fisheries Service, Rizal Ardiansyah, reminded fishermen to be aware of high waves in the southern waters of Banten.

A report from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) predicts a wave height of 2.5 to 4.0 of four meters is likely to occur in southern Banten on November 22-25, 2022.

"Recently, there was a fisherman from Binuangeun who was hit by a wave until his boat was damaged and one fisherman was reported missing", said Rizal.