Maritime riches

Maritime riches

I was delighted to read the contribution by Santo Darmosumarto
of Pondok Gede in his column in The Jakarta Post of Nov. 8, 1999,
captioned Maritime security, enlivening thereby the discussion of
the topic among the interested readers.

The writer rightly commented that my writing represented an
exemplary attempt to arouse awareness of Indonesia's maritime
potential. Space would not suffice to elaborate on other
pertinent aspects of the subject, such as that dealing with
maritime security from the hand of Mr. Darmosumarto. To be true,
my writing is intended to serve another purpose. It is to
generate awareness among school children and teachers regarding
the maritime riches of the Indonesian archipelago.

An editorial review of my writing caused a concluding
paragraph to be deleted. It elicited an appeal to our young
generation in the new millennium to start acquainting themselves
with introductory studies on the subject of maritime riches in
elementary and secondary schools, corresponding to the needs of
the new era. This proves that I had the schoolchildren in mind
when I raised the subject. I thought that the topic of maritime
riches raised by President Abdurrahman Wahid during his visit to
his hometown of Jombang in East Java may well have signaled an
opportune occasion to generate popular interest in the natural
riches of the sea.

I happen to have an old atlas entitled The Seas (in Japanese:
Umi) published by Satoshi Kako, Ph.D. in Maritime Technology, of
Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Published in 1969 the book reached
its 30th printing by 1983. The book represents as atlas showing
aquarelles drawn by the author himself, depicting all kinds of
sceneries of the living, non-living resources and minerals at the
bottom of the seas. One picture shows a fishing boat on the
surface spreading out a trawl net (Japanese: nagashi-sashi ami)
along the bottom of a fishing bank, into which a swarm of fish
are caught.

Another picture depicts ocean mining with the installation of
oil-drilling mechanisms and structures on the surface of the
seas, but shows robots and exploring equipment at the bottom of
the continental shelf, while the different layers containing oil
deposits at a depth of 200 to 300 meters are shown.

Many other interesting features show images of the cultivation
beds of shell-fish in shoals as sea farmers are reaping the
harvest of shell-fish and seaweed. Then a picture shows the
sequence of slopes and plains downward to the bottom of the sea,
ranging from continental shelf (Japanese: riku dana), continental
slope (riku dana gake) continental rise (umi dana) abyssal plain
(kaikoo), at depths respectively of 100 to 200 m, 500 m, 3,000 m
and from 6,000 to 8,000 m.

Imagine that the Japanese school children are taught the
different slopes and plains following the continental shelf down
to the abyssal plain.

In Indonesian schools, a popular awareness of the existence of
the continental shelf and the other plains may not even be in
vogue.

The atlas published by Satoshi Kako is written in Hiragana
(simplified Japanese characters), as the narration is addressed
to school children.

A phrase from the text reads: (translated from Japanese) Well,
how about examining the sea for yourself, exploring the sea's
riches and getting to love the sea?

A similar question should be addressed to Indonesian school
children. Part of their energy and time used in the excessive
reading of comic books may well be switched to reading useful
introductory books on the natural riches of the sea, so think I.

S. SUHAEDI