Life After... a decade of cyanide fishing in Bali: Reef guardian recalls his pivot from poison

BALI, Indonesia – The year he learnt to cast poison into the sea, Gombal found himself at its mercy. 

It was 1988, and the cyanide fisherman was en route to catch ornamental fish at a reef near Les, his village in north-eastern Bali, when a storm caused his vessel to capsize. 

With just a tyre-sized jerrycan keeping him afloat, Gombal – whose real name is Nyoman Teriada – drifted in the Lombok Strait for over 24 hours, squeezing sweat from his clothes to quench his thirst, before he was carried to shore. 

But the trade brought in so much money that Gombal, as everyone in Les calls him, chose to put the near-death encounter behind him. 

It was only in the 2000s, when he realised the cyanide was killing the reefs that were the livelihood of the village, that he knew things could not go on as they had.

Today, the yellowing jerrycan still takes pride of place on the family altar during Balinese ceremonies.

And Gombal, now 53, no longer catches fish with poison. 

He fills his days instead by helping with reef restoration efforts in the village, leading tourists on dives, and spending time with his son, fishing in the deep sea with a hook and line. 

The pivot from poison was a challenging one, Gombal said, speaking to The Straits Times from his home in Les, a village of about 8,000 people.

Catching colourful reef fish for the aquarium trade was more lucrative than his previous job as a salt farmer, until it wasn’t, he said. 

As the cyanide caused the reefs to waste away, ornamental fish became harder and harder to come by. 

Moving on from cyanide fishing was more a necessity, than choice. 

Poisoning a reef

Cyanide stuns fish, making them easier to capture. 

Fishermen prepare for their hunt by first mixing solid blocks of potassium cyanide with seawater, and then taking small bottles of the mixture underwater. 

“We chase the fish until they take shelter in the coral, and then we’ll spray the cyanide on them,” Gombal said. “The fish become dazed, making it easy for us to catch them.”

But there is also waste in the process, as a number of the fish are killed or weakened by the poison, said Gombal. The corals also deteriorate.

The traders kept only the best ones, and the fishermen would discard those that did not make the cut. 

Since the 1960s, the demand for ornamental aquarium fish has increased, resulting in the collection of millions of live reef fish every year. 

Trade data from the World Bank showed that in 2023, Indonesia was one of the top five exporters of live ornamental fish, exporting over 1.7 million kg of fish. 

Cyanide fishing is illegal in Indonesia. But for many coastal communities, the sea is a resource from which they can earn a better living than salt farming – a laborious process of evaporating seawater to harness the salt precipitate.

Gombal said that as a cyanide fisherman, he earned around $5 a day. As a salt farmer, however, he took home just 80 cents in three days. “Many of us ended up making the switch,” he said. 

Gombal was caught cyanide fishing in 1993, and spent about five months in prison. “But even then, I never gave up,” he said. 

However, it was only a matter of time before the cyanide took its toll on the reef, and the fishermen started to realise they had to venture farther and farther afield to find their quarry.

Reef fish, such as damselfish, clownfish and butterfly fish, live in coral reef habitats, and the loss of their homes meant they too disappeared. 

Gombal said the fishermen had to sail from Bali to other parts of the Indonesian archipelago, such as Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores and even Sulawesi, in journeys that could last for almost two weeks. 

These trips put the fishermen at the mercy of the weather, and Gombal found out how perilous that could be in 1988.

Even the process of diving can be dangerous. Fishermen often free dive without any diving apparatus when they go looking for ornamental fish. 

To extend their time underwater, some will attempt compressor diving. This involves the use of a portable air compressor on a boat, feeding air through a hose to the diver underwater. 

Safety protocol recommended for recreational diving is never followed, and the divers risk suffering from decompression sickness, owing to changes in the air pressure at depth. 

By the year 2000, the Les community had been fishing with cyanide for over a decade, and the reefs were visibly distressed.

“I started noticing the coral around Les dying because of the cyanide,” Gombal said. “Fishing outside Bali didn’t make sense financially,” he added, pointing to high operational costs, such as for fuel, and low profit margins.

“That’s when I decided to change.” 

Buds of hope 

Around that time, a non-profit organisation known as Yayasan Bahtera Nusantara introduced to the Les community a new way of fishing, using barrier nets instead of potassium cyanide. 

The foundation also said it would be willing to pay a higher price for fish caught using nets instead of poison, Gombal recalled. 

The head fisherman of Les during that period was a man known as Pak Eka – or Made Merta. 

He led the community’s transformation, Gombal said, and also attempted on his own to help the reef recover, by wedging broken pieces of live coral found on the seafloor into nooks and crannies on the seabed.

Once established on a substrate, such as a rock, a coral fragment can continue to grow.

The initial attempts were not always successful, Pak Eka, now 57, recalled, but the community gradually improved on its techniques, and had support from government grants and corporate donations to purchase artificial reef structures. 

From a high of about 90 people catching ornamental fish in the 1990s, only a handful of between 25 and 30 continue to do so, and not with cyanide.

Gombal said that while he was initially hesitant about switching to barrier net fishing, the signs of budding life on the seafloor convinced him.

“Seeing the transformation made me happy – I’d swim out as early as 7am or 8am to check on the coral,” he said. “And before going to shower in the evening, I’d go for another swim to see them again.”

The role of ecotourism 

Today, Les Village in Bali offers a tranquil escape from the hustle and bustle of the tourist hot spots of Seminyak or Kuta. 

Located about a four-hour car ride from Ngurah Rai International Airport, the main airport on the Island of the Gods, the village is today home to an ecotourism facility that has a restaurant, Wi-Fi, and air-conditioned chalets. 

It is a marked change from what the village was like in the 1980s, Gombal said.

Back then, most of the members in the community were salt farmers or fishermen, who consumed the fish they caught or sold it at the nearby markets.

“We had no refrigerators or ice, so fishermen had to sell the fish immediately,” he said. “If the fish could not be sold, families would cook the fish first before selling it the next day.” 

The concept of ecotourism came to Les in 2012 through a social enterprise, Sea Communities, set up by scuba divers Cipto Aji Gunawan and Elaine Kwee.

The duo, who were later joined by two other co-founders Garri Bernal and Kerry Wiedemann, wanted to reduce the impetus for cyanide fishing, by bringing ecotourism dollars to the community. 

The first guests were backpackers and individual tourists, but as word spread, interest from corporations, universities and schools grew, said Ms Kwee. 

The reef restoration efforts in Les also got a boost from Sea Communities, which organises an annual expedition that allows recreational divers to work with marine biologists from Singapore on reef restoration and recovery. 

Said Ms Kwee: “It is easy to plant a coral, but more difficult to make sure it survives. If the fishermen are trained in the scientific methods of coral restoration, it could ensure that the reef restoration efforts are successful in the long term.” 

Gombal’s son Komang, now 27, likes to think that he grew up with the coral reef near his home.

He was only six years old when reef restoration efforts started in Les, said Komang, whose full name is Komang Ngurah Semita Dana.

“Over time, as I snorkelled in the area, I noticed the coral had grown bigger. It feels like we were growing up together, the coral and me,” said Komang, who is an employee with Sea Communities.

“Now, I hope that as the coral grows more beautifully, I’ll also keep growing into a better person.” 

Gombal hopes that the next generation will not have to rely on cyanide fishing to earn a living. As the corals grew and fish life started to return, he said he shared the transformation with his friends and family.

“They got to witness the changes first-hand.”