The Bajau Hunters of the South Seas

There are people on our planet who are more at home in water than on land.

CHILDREN YELL

In a distant corner of the Western Pacific lies the Coral Triangle.

These waters are the richest on Earth

and the people here have adapted to ocean life like nowhere else.

BOTH CHAT

My name is Will Millard.

I'm a writer. And for much of the last eight years,

I've been working and exploring in this remote region.

Cor, this place is a minefield.

Now I'm off to live with three of its extraordinary communities.

I've never met a shark finner before.

I want to understand the unique bond these people have with the ocean

at a time of great change.

WHISTLE TRILLS

I can't really figure out who's exploiting who.

CHILDREN YELL AND CHEER

I'm beginning at the centre of the Coral Triangle,

in a fishing village built entirely at sea.

There's an octopus under the house!

These are the Bajau, ocean nomads who are settling for the first time.

For these people, these fish represent everything.

Every single day, these guys are on a tightrope.

I want to find out what the future holds

for these last hunters of the South Seas.

In all of my reading about the Coral Triangle,

there is one group of people

held up as having the closest relationship with the ocean.

They are the Bajau, a group of nomadic fishermen,

who have roamed the seas around Indonesia for centuries.

It is only recently that they have finally settled.

We've been travelling for three days to get to this moment.

But now, finally, this is the last bit of our long journey.

We're on a little wooden ferry boat,

heading out to a village called Sampela.

And there's a very, very special group of people there

that I've heard so much about.

Sampela is found at the Coral Triangle's heart.

It lies off the coast of Sulawesi,

within the boundaries of a national park.

For the last 50 years,

this is where Bajau fishermen from across Indonesia

have been building a village.

From what I've heard, only two generations ago,

these people were living their entire lives at sea.

And they've since come together

to form one, single community...

on stilts,

in the middle of the open ocean.

For centuries, the Bajau lived exclusively on boats.

Under government pressure, they moved into houses,

but the village they've constructed is built entirely on the water.

Must be almost 600 metres from land.

A kilometre to the nearest village.

This is fairly low tide, as well,

so there's no way you can do anything without a boat here.

It's so much bigger than I was expecting.

This is a serious community.

How do people, who have wandered the oceans,

adjust to life in a fixed place?

All of the foundations are on dead coral.

That is just extraordinary!

I've never seen anything like this before.

It looks like this is it.

CHILDREN YELL

Hello! Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello! Hello!

OK. I'm going to try and find the headman's house.

Sampela has an elected headman,

who decides which family any visitor stays with.

Hello.

Oh, fantastic. This is the man.

The headman has agreed to take me to one of the families

who first settled in the village.

Oh, yeah. Hello!

There's a pool hall under here.

Yeah?

-Yo!

-Hello!

Yo!

There is no formal structure to Sampela.

It has simply grown

as more Bajau families have left their boats and settled.

Over 1,500 people now live here.

Cor, this place is a minefield.

I think this might be where I'm staying.

My host, Kabei, lives with his wife, Mama Pek,

and their three children

in a two-room house eight foot above the water.

Yeah.

Yeah?

Fantastic.

Is it a bedroom with a view? Wow...

Yeah?

Oh, God...

I'm so worried about destroying the house.

You could fall straight through the floor.

It'd be incredibly impolite.

Yeah?

This is the kitchen. That's the bathroom. Wow!

The Bajau diet is almost exclusively fish.

All family members share whatever's been caught that day.

Yeah.

Oh...

Eat the whole skull?

I get the feeling not a lot gets wasted here.

Kabei...

-Really?

-Yeah.

That's unreal.

There is no electricity in Sampela.

And as the sun goes down on my first night,

the village quickly becomes very dark.

It's really late at night and I've got to go to the toilet.

HE SIGHS DEEPLY

Absolute nightmare.

I've got to be so careful here.

I was considering not drinking whilst staying here.

But it's dehydration or...

..death by falling through the floor into the poo area!

It's one hell of a time to find out I've got a weak bladder.

URINE SPLASHES INTO THE SEA

COCK CROWS

The next morning, as Sampela stirs,

my toilet trip is discovered by Kabei.

My glasses have gone down the poo hole.

They're in the sea.

Oh, Kabei...

Oh, God, I can see them.

Kabei's trying to fish them up.

Well done! He's got them!

Oh, Kabei!

WILLIAM LAUGHS

You are a genius!

COCK CROWS

Days begin early in Sampela.

Canoes return from overnight fishing trips...

..and everybody moves from their houses down towards the water.

Everyone is working.

You never really walk along and see people just sort of sat around.

It's, er... Everybody's doing something, you know?

Women paint their faces with rice flour

to protect themselves from the sun's glare.

And every day, both young and old head out into the ocean to fish.

It is a very exciting day today.

We're going to try the spear guns.

And this really is what these people are famous for.

It's certainly the most evocative scene

that I ever saw of these guys before I came to this village.

So, Kabei...

Here we go...

Kabei works alongside his father Kakei and brother Laoda.

They are one of the last families in Sampela

to use traditional spear guns,

as most other fishermen have moved on to nets.

The Bajau are unique in the water.

With virtually no body fat,

they can reach the bottom with nothing more than a few kicks.

For this family, fishing seems to be more than just providing food.

It defines who they are and separates them from anybody else.

Their reputation in the village is as hunters of the ocean...

..rather than simply fishermen.

Even at 75, Kabei's father can find fish at more than 15 metres.

It's the first time I've seen these boys in the sea.

And it is something to behold.

I've never seen anything like it.

The... The economy of movement.

The symmetry in the water.

Their eyesight.

It's like watching underwater ballet.

By late afternoon, we have enough to feed the whole family.

This is the way the Bajau have traditionally fished.

Enough for today and perhaps tomorrow, but no more.

For the sea always provided when they lived on boats.

Kabei's parents are one of the few couples still alive

who were born at sea,

before Sampela was built.

The Bajau trace their roots to an old myth

that tells of a king whose daughter was washed away in a flood.

And he sent forth a child to find her.

For many years, this child searched the seas...

and when he did not return,

the king sent out others.

Many of these went to land, but some remained in the water.

Over generations, these people learnt to survive entirely off the seas,

as comfortable below the water's surface as they were above it.

These are the Bajau.

And they lived on boats, rarely coming in to land.

For in the myth, the sea gave them all that they would ever need.

Kabei...

There's an octopus under the house!

Kabei, camera...

Oh, Kabei, you've dropped it!

Oh, ink!

Oh, my God!

The worst fisherman I've ever seen!

Do you know, it's a fascinating system.

You go to the toilet and there is a smorgasbord of creatures under here

ready to recycle whatever you want to deposit into the sea.

So, there's swarms and swarms of bait fish under there.

So, during the day, the children are fishing these out.

Their dads are then taking them

to go and fish at night for the big fish,

sticking them on the hook and live-baiting them through the water.

And then, underneath it all, in all the mud,

are all of these little mussels and clams

that are just processing all of the waste

that are coming out of people's bums.

It's a sewage treatment works and a fishery all rolled into one.

Sampela's built on a narrow bed of sea grass.

And every low tide, Kabei's extended family

harvest sea urchins and sea cucumbers in the shallows.

These were once the currency of the Bajau

and traded for vegetables and rice.

But half the village has now turned away

from such traditional activities.

I've just been told, "You can go for a walk

"but you've got to be back in ten minutes for your food."

CHILDREN CHATTER LOUDLY

Right...

So, something you begin to notice,

when you get away from that half of the village,

which is much more traditional,

and you start heading towards here,

immediately the walkways are better,

the walkways to the houses are much better.

And the houses themselves...

You've got a satellite dish,

potential electric going in,

tin roofs,

and some of the houses have tiles.

And this part of the village is...

..much more money-conscious.

Everybody here, when it's the time for the call to pray,

goes to the mosque, which is in the middle of the village.

Whereas, down my end, I've not seen anyone go yet, at all.

CALL TO PRAYERS

Not long after the village was founded,

Islam arrived in Sampela.

Soon after came modern fishing practices and nets...

..eagerly embraced by many families.

In Kabei's neighbourhood,

traditional Bajau beliefs and fishing practices still dominate.

People rely on handmade spear guns

and a daily catch to sustain their families.

Right, we're off to the market today with the girls.

I'm going with Maria and Maria's aunt

and all the fish that her husband caught last night.

Even small fish is better than no fish, right?

The nearest market to Sampela

is found on the neighbouring island of Kaledupa.

This is a journey that has to be made every single day...

..just to get your daily essentials.

This is where the Bajau paddle to buy fresh water

and to sell their most valuable fish.

Here we are.

It's as close as many of them will come to land.

PEOPLE CHATTER

This is such an unusual set-up.

All of the women from Sampela are sat down here selling their fish

and we are, basically, underneath the bridge in Kaledupa

and the Kaledupans are looking down on us

and the market forces are very much with them.

They don't have to buy their fish from us,

because they can go elsewhere, you know?

There's lots of other markets around Kaledupa.

But these women,

they HAVE TO sell their fish to these Kaledupan people.

The Sampelan women only have small canoes

and Kaledupa is the one market they can reach safely.

The islanders appear to have a stranglehold on all Bajau trading.

I have to be honest, the tone feels slightly derisory.

I saw someone spit down on one of the women earlier.

The prices are really low.

People are selling tuna over there for about £1, £1.50 a throw.

And these guys have pretty much just got to take what they're given.

And the Kaledupans here, they know that.

And they've got them over a barrel.

Maria's just saying, there's no point us waiting any more.

The market is saturated with better fish than what we're selling.

And if we wait much longer, these fish are going to go bad

and then we can't sell them tomorrow, either. So...

That's quite serious, actually.

That means that Maria is now unable

to get fresh water for her family.

When I first arrived here and I first went fishing with those guys,

I was absolutely awestruck

by what they can achieve and what they can do in the sea.

And I think it's easy to be fooled into thinking...

..that life here is easy.

But the fact of the matter is,

all of your eggs are in one basket in Sampela.

Everything relies on you being able to sell your fish.

And if you've got fish to sell, then that's good, if you can sell them.

But if you've got fish that you can't sell

or you haven't been able to catch fish,

you're in real trouble.

So we've come back now with a boat that's empty,

bar two dozen rotting fish.

And Maria said to me, "Well, my husband's just going

"to have to catch big fish tonight."

It's as simple as that.

Later that day, the rain hits

and nobody goes fishing.

Stuck in Kabei's house,

it's his oldest son, Lobo, who provides most of the entertainment.

Honestly, mate. Thin ice, my friend.

For two days, the rain continues.

Nobody fishes.

LOBO SINGS

Lobo and I run through every game we know.

Wow!

By the third day,

people are beginning to worry about food supplies.

CHILD CRIES

Being surrounded by water,

combined with bad weather,

means that everybody is stuck here.

You just have to sit here and wait it out.

That night, Kabei decides to risk the storm.

OK.

The wind has picked right up and, er...

the rain's come in

and everyone's a little bit tense now, to be honest.

A little bit worried.

Kabei was going to go for two hours and then come back.

But he's been gone for three.

But the weather's settled down now, so that's a good sign.

You know, he's probably fine.

Oh, Kabei!

Yeah.

I'm glad to see him.

That is one tough man.

Yeah.

COCK CROWS

The day after a storm is a busy one in Sampela,

as everybody needs to get out fishing.

Kabei's family opt to hunt octopus on the closest reef to the village.

We've got an octopus!

Now, it's only a small one.

It's quite a lot of effort as well, you know?

It's been a good 20 minutes of fighting the current.

One little hole, a four-foot spear...

..and that's what we've got for four people. So, we'll need a few more.

It soon becomes obvious that this reef is in poor health.

Despite their skill, Kabei's family have little to choose from.

Our afternoon's work has caught enough to feed the whole family,

but not much more.

For the Bajau,

the blame for this lies with people outside their village.

Sampela sits within a national park.

Nobody, except the Bajau, have licence to fish the waters.

But this law seems rarely to be respected.

I'd seen big boats on the horizon before,

skirting the edge of the national park.

But in my second week, one anchors not more than a kilometre away.

It's a boat the headman knows well.

This is a serious problem. A very serious problem.

And I've got no idea how we're going to be received going up here now.

What's that?

They're just fixing their machine and then they're going?

Let's have a look in the hold.

You can't tell me, every single time you come here,

your boat breaks down in the middle of a national park.

It is, what, 200 metres from Sampela,

where every day we go out and all we catch are tiny, little fish?

I've seen one big pelagic in the whole time I've been here.

And, you know, these guys can scoop up more than those guys

can probably manage in two months in about 15 minutes.

Do I believe that they break down here every single time that they come through? No, of course I don't.

But can we prove anything otherwise? No, of course we can't.

So, what do we do?

I guess we get back in our boat

and we go back to Sampela, where there's no fish.

Brilliant. OK.

Just look at this contrast here now.

You've got three boats.

One over there catching maybe three fish in the next three hours.

Some women over there eating sea urchins.

The village here, full of impoverished people.

And then a boat there

that can collect 100kg of fish in about ten minutes,

right from underneath their noses.

It just makes me so angry, though, you know,

that it's just so obvious and there's just nothing being done.

Nothing at all.

Kabei's reaction to the fishing boat is surprising.

He doesn't seem upset.

It's only later that evening I learn why.

We've just been going through the Sama language

for all of the books in my coral reef book,

and we've come across a very interesting fish and it's this one.

Kareo tokeh, the bamboo shark.

Yeah?

God...!

Wow!

Ah-ha!

So, it's a shark finning trip.

They go shark finning.

Yeah.

Wow!

I've never met a shark finner before.

It's a bit strange, really,

because I've actually campaigned against shark finning.

I follow the Shark Trust.

And I guess I've always seen them as the bad guys.

And yet, you know, I love Kabei and I love his family.

And every two years, ten million rupiah. That's a...

That's a vital chunk of cash for his family.

So, a way of topping up your wages is to go shark finning.

And the other thing they do here is collect these

for the Chinese medicine market...

Seahorses.

Ten million rupiah every kilo.

Kabei and many other Bajau join these illegal fishing boats every year,

fishing out the very waters they depend upon.

They do it not just for the money,

but because they still believe the ocean

has an infinite supply of fish.

Bojango is the god of the sea,

who determines the fate of each fisherman.

According to the Bajau, it's he who controls the health of the ocean.

I find this belief system difficult.

It seems so at odds with the emptiness of the sea around Sampela.

I think this idea that the sea is infinite,

that it's going to constantly keep giving fish

and that there's going to constantly be work for the men here

in catching those fish...

And it just isn't true. It's not true at all.

I can count on one hand the amount of decent,

commercial-sized fish I've seen caught.

That's not enough to sustain 1,000 people and their livelihoods.

Not by a long chalk.

And yet, they believe that everything's going to be fine.

And they'll just turn round to you and smile and say,

"No. You know, everything's fine. Don't worry."

But I do worry. I do worry. I worry about this place.

I worry about this place a lot. I worry about what's going to happen.

I worry about what's going to happen in the future.

That future came knocking at Kabei's house the next morning.

Two men dressed in motorbike helmets and carrying a large wallet.

Loan sharks from the island of Kaledupa

are now daily visitors to Sampela.

Mama Pek's in trouble with the moneylenders.

So, she says she's paid and they say she hasn't.

She hasn't paid for a long time.

OK.

Kabei's wife isn't the only person with debts.

Over two thirds of the village owe money to the loan sharks.

I can sense a complete change in the atmosphere in Sampela

following these guys.

It's not the happy, rosy, joyful place

that I've become accustomed to.

These people are not liked.

Two generations ago,

most Bajau families bartered for their daily needs.

It's only since settling that a cash economy has developed

and some people are still struggling to adjust.

So, this is the place where the money that they've just gathered

gets redivided out, recounted

and then taken back out and reloaned to the village.

The money has been in her hands for less than three seconds

and already she has to give a commission.

So, for her small loan of 300,000,

every day she has to pay 12,000 back to these guys.

And that's just interest.

That's not taking anything out of the original loan.

They can't write.

Every single contract here

is finished with the thumbprint of the lady.

And the moneylenders leant into me and they said,

"Oh, it's because she can't write." And I'm sat there thinking,

"Well, if she can't write, she can't read, either."

It's a double-sided contract with all of this writing on it,

all of these obligations that they have to fulfil.

And you can't help but notice that...

..these people have absolutely no education.

There's no other income stream.

If the sea stops giving,

or if something happens to her husband out to sea,

what's she going to do then?

These guys are going to keep knocking and keep coming.

And she's just going to get in deeper and deeper debt.

THEY CHAT

I've now been in the village for three weeks.

And during this time, I've grown extremely close to Kabei's family.

HE YELLS

In this part of the village,

all the children spend their days in and around the water.

But one child remains quite separate from the rest.

And that is my friend Lobo.

Lobo, who I'm probably closest to out of the whole family,

has a disability...

erm...

that I've been told is only going to get worse

and he can't swim as a result.

Which means he can't do what Kabei does,

which is provide for the family.

And I'm going to have to ask Kabei

about what he thinks Lobo's future is.

And it's an awkward question to ask,

because I probably don't want to hear the answer, either.

Because I suspect I won't like it.

Lobo is thinner than the other kids and walks with some difficulty.

He's often left out of village activities

and it's only Kabei who is prepared to talk about him.

Kabei...

That's not very long.

Yeah.

HE SPEAKS KABEI'S LANGUAGE

COCK CROWS

It's early morning, after we discussed Lobo.

And, er...

it's a bit weird talking about him when he's lying right there.

The longer I've spent here, the more I begin to realise

that people are actually quite embarrassed about his condition.

They make jokes and laugh at him and generally aren't very nice.

And I guess it all boils down to fish.

If you can't fish,

then you are not part of the community.

And that's something I find extremely frustrating

and very upsetting.

Well, you're not going to get sunburnt today, Lobo.

In many respects, Lobo is almost like the canary in the coalmine.

You know, I almost want to say,

"You should be looking at Lobo and using him

"as almost the first person in your family

"to go out and to get skills away from fishing,

"because there might not be any fish

"for you to survive on in the future."

And they always come back with the same answer, which is,

"There's always going to be fish."

The traditional beliefs that Kabei holds

are not shared by everyone in Sampela.

CALL TO PRAYERS

In other parts of the village, change is happening

and a new Bajau identity is beginning to emerge.

Along with the arrival of Islam came an Indonesian school.

CHILDREN YELL

I've got a uniform!

BELL RINGS

This is the oldest students.

So, I think these are around 16, 17 years old.

So, they should be leaving school soon.

It'll be interesting to hear what they've got to say about where they want to go.

Hello!

OK.

OK.

Everyone's parents works in the sea.

OK. Kasih banyak.

Right.

It's great that there's children here

that have ambition outside of just being a fisherman,

that there are children here that want more.

But...

all of the jobs that they want

will take them away from this island.

And, I guess, what I'm wondering is what's this island going to be like

when all of the ambitious, educated children

have already left and gone elsewhere?

Is there just going to be subsistence fishermen here

eking out a living until there are no more fish

and then they move on and Sampela is no more?

I've got no idea.

OK...

Shhh...

Stand up!

Someone's going to get it.

Who gets it first wins a big prize. Stand up!

Bagus!

Stand up. Bagus.

Bagus. Stand up.

Sit down!

Stand up!

Sit down!

Stand up!

Separate sides of this village seem to see the future in different ways.

Some turning towards the land

and others facing out to an increasingly empty sea.

OK, Lobo, have you got it?

OK, do I like Bajau people?

Yes! I love Bajau people.

OK, Lobo...

Aw...

Close proximity in this room. It's quite nice.

The next day, we fish for the final time.

Three generations facing very different futures.

Fishing is all they do because it's all they know.

You know, it's all they've ever known.

And it's hard to watch them go out

and to put so much time and effort into their fishing

and then just come back with so little.

Meanwhile, just the other side of the island,

someone catches 100 kilos of fish in five minutes.

People look down their noses at the Bajau.

They see them as backward and primitive

and they don't see that other side to them,

that incredibly deep-thinking,

loving, humble people.

They just want to exploit them.

I am really worried about people like Lobo

and people that don't fit into the system here.

I hope he doesn't know that people think he's cursed

and I hope he doesn't know that people think so little of him.

Because I certainly don't.

Hey, Lobo...

OK, bagus.

OK, go on, then.

I'm going to cry.

Oh, Mama...

Dear me...

Mama...

WILL SIGHS HEAVILY

Come on, buddy.

Oh, God!

OK, let's go.

OK, dah-dah.

Dah-dah.

That's it.

We have to go. It's so sad.

Oh, my God!

Mama Pek's last stand.

WILL LAUGHS

How could I have thought I could have just walked off the island

without another massive meal?

Oh, makasih.

What a place...

What a place.