Outcasts of the Islands

"The sea gypsies live on boats around Indonesia and Thailand but they can travel many miles away from the land so they’re not located in any specific land places and the boats are actually their homes, even though they may only be 30 feet long and eight feet wide. They keep everything they own on those boats and the whole family stays together and they express the belief that if they’re forced to go ashore then they’re going to get sick and die. What Sebastian Hope did was go and live on some of these boats in the 1990s and he describes their lifestyle – the different groups, languages, spiritual beliefs, but they all share a common activity, which is fishing. As is quite widely known now there are very destructive fishing processes happening in Asian waters with dynamite and cyanide being used and wrecking the fish population. So now the sea gypsies are really under threat and some have been forced to come ashore because they just can’t get enough fish to sustain their lives. It’s a very poignant tale about how these people who had a really strong culture for centuries have been forced away from their homes on the sea by the destructive practices of foreign fishers in their waters. Well, curiously, the dynamite fishing has gone down a bit since Hope wrote his book because of 9/11 and dynamite being much harder to get, but there is an increase in the use of poisons like cyanide which can have the same devastating effect on the fish populations. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . No, well, people do. It is shocking, isn’t it? It’s hard for me to answer for the UK because I’m not sure what fish is imported there. In Australia we do get fish from Malaysia and there could be cyanide fishing around there, yes. We have very strict examination of fish coming into the country and I’m sure the UK does too, but without these checks you might well be eating fish killed using cyanide, yes."