I AM DRIVING along the narrow island roads of Lombok, Indonesia, heading for the fishing village of Tanjung Luar to visit one of the country’s largest seafood markets – a market renowned for its trade in sharks. Fuelled by Asia’s insatiable desire for shark-fin soup, Indonesia is one of the world’s largest exporters of shark fin. Up to 80 per cent of the species represented in the Indonesian shark-fin trade have a conservation status of endangered, vulnerable, or near-threatened.
As soft morning light streams through palm fronds, Lombok appears to be sleeping. This quickly changes when I reach the heaving water’s edge of the Tanjung Luar fish market. Navigating through a bustling crowd pulsing with high-pitched voices, I make my way to the beach. Here, local women with clay-painted faces wade chest-deep into the ocean to meet jukungs (traditional fishing boats). The women, clad in colourful hijabs, dash back and forth between the boats and the shore, rapidly offloading the night’s catch. While Indonesian women play vital roles in the country’s fishing industry, traditionally it is the men who go to sea.
The beach is a hive of activity. On the sand, hands plunge elbow-deep into buckets of tiny bait fish; piles of squid are cleaned, their
