At sunrise, Zausia left the elevated hut built on the blue water, boarded the boat, and rowed out to sea, looking down into the clear water for fish.
When she finds a suitable spot, she reels in her oars, baits four hooks, and casts her line into the deep waters of Indonesia’s Molucca Sea.
Sometimes the hook came up empty, but other times she would catch four fish at once.
“Fishing is the only thing we Bajo people know how to do,” sighed Zausiyah, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name. “I started fishing after my husband became blind. I’m tired, but this is the only way we make a living.”
Before noon, she was on her way home to her hut, one of a dozen off the coast of east-central Sulawesi. Beneath each hut, wooden boats bobbed, shellfish hanging from ropes and sea cucumbers scattered on the decks, drying in the hot sun.
Before crawling back to her home, about 10 feet above the water, Zausia traded her fish for some cookies with neighbors who had just returned from the mainland.
For centuries, the Bajo have traditionally lived on the high seas, spending much of their nomadic existence on boats or in sea huts supported by wooden poles anchored to the ocean floor.
The Bajo community is scattered throughout the coasts of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. In Indonesia, there are an estimated 180,000 Bajo people in 14 provinces.
Traditionally, the Bajo came ashore only to trade supplies or to escape storms.
But starting in the late 1980s, Indonesia began developing land settlements for the Badjao and improving services for them, leading more Badjao to adopt a mixed lifestyle, living both on land and at sea. Some even gave up their sea life altogether.
Zaoussia said she is in her 60s and her husband, Marwadi, is about 72, and they have always been with the sea, although Marwadi lost his eyesight in an explosion while fishing.
Their children, who live on land in nearby villages, take turns visiting them regularly and bringing them supplies such as rice, cooking oil, fresh water and wood.
The children’s village is located on Peren Island, one of the largest islands in the Banggai Archipelago, which belongs to the Central Sulawesi province.
Although the village is connected to the mainland, most of it is not actually part of the mainland. Clusters of wooden houses are built in shallow waters not far from the shore, connected by footbridges.
Like Zausiyah’s huts, those in Badjo are located further from the water’s edge, and evidence of a life dependent on marine resources is evident everywhere, with dried fish spread out on wooden surfaces and fishermen bringing fresh catches to a small market.
In fact, the only edge of the village is on land, with only a lonely gravel road connecting it to the rest of the world, with motorbikes coming and going on the road.
But even the village’s liminal status between land and sea is a far cry from life on the high seas.
“Things have changed a lot here,” recalled Sunilko, a leader of the Indonesian Bajau Association, an advocacy group. “The village used to be all mangroves, and if I couldn’t take a boat, I had to swim to go to school. Unlike our ancestors, we are no longer boat dwellers.”
Although the Badjao or Bajau people no longer live entirely on the sea, many still rely almost entirely on the ocean for their livelihood.
Off the island, fisherman Wardy and some of his relatives tend a 50-foot-wide stationary fish cage, also known as a sero. The cages are placed to intercept migrating fish, and the best spots for them are passed down from generation to generation.
The morning tranquility at sea was shattered when a school of bonito was spotted swimming into a trap that had an open bar at one end and a net at the other.
“Get ready, they’re coming,” Wordy shouted from the observation post.
Some fishermen began rowing to the edge of the trap. Wordy watched the fish swim toward the trap. “They’re coming in. Close the door,” he shouted.
Five fishermen then jumped into the sea and used their nets to capture the day’s catch. It took a concerted effort to get the nets out of the water, but the three boats were soon filled with around 300 slapping fish. Everyone cheered as they watched.
While the best locations to place traps along fish migration paths depend on traditional knowledge, the Bajo have adopted some more modern methods to access marine resources.
Freedivers, long known for their skills — being able to go underwater without oxygen — now use breathing apparatus to help them go deeper and stay underwater longer to catch fish. Traditional wooden goggles have been replaced by store-bought plastic ones.
As land-based lifestyle options increase, some younger Bajo people are choosing not to fish at all, raising concerns that traditional practices are disappearing.
No matter how well-intentioned some of the government’s interventions may be, they are often viewed from the perspective of a people who are used to living on the land and who know nothing about Bajo culture. In one case, a medical center was built in an area that the Bajo consider off-limits and where no one would go. And while the government tends to promote concrete houses and pedestrian bridges as a sturdier alternative to wood, the Bajo may find them unnatural and unwelcoming.
For those who study the Bajo culture, there is no doubt that the culture is becoming increasingly integrated into land life and losing touch with its nomadic, seafaring past.
“The Bajo we see today are not the Bajo we knew before,” said Wengki Ariando, a researcher at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University who studies the culture, saying many Bajo “have lost their identity.”
Before Bajo culture declines further or even disappears altogether, advocates for its survival hope that younger generations can maintain their connection to the sea while embracing a more down-to-earth lifestyle.
For Zausiyah and Mawardi, however, life on land holds little appeal: the sea is home.
They believe the Bajo have a deep spiritual connection to the ocean and should uphold the community’s taboos to avoid being rebuked by the ocean spirits. They worry that the younger generation will not follow the rules, or even forget what is offensive altogether.
Throwing rice or other food into the sea is taboo, as is entering sacred areas or speaking loudly and being disrespectful in nature. “The younger generation should understand that if we break taboos, nature will give us warnings,” Zausia said.
After some thought, her husband, Marwadi, admitted that the younger generation did not have the same reverence for the sea as he did.
“Young people today are different,” he said. “They don’t even listen to us elders, let alone nature.”
