Help communities through sustainable aquaculture

Continue our education program with the children in the Mt. Agung refugee camp at Les village, north Bali

Greetings from North Bali!

When the Indonesian Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) raised the danger status of Mount Agung in Bali to the highest level of four, starting from Sept. 22, 2017 until early January 2018, Les village, where our Centre is situated, has been busy accommodating refugees. School visits from abroad to the LINI Aquaculture and Training Centre (LATC) have had to be cancelled for the time being. However, it does not mean that we have no work! We continue working at the Centre with two Australian volunteers from the University of Murdoch Australia, who stayed at the Centre from November to December 2017, and our Indonesian interns. We prepare to seal the aquariums, concrete ponds, and equipment from the dust if the volcano erupts. We continue working in our organic garden, and learned how to make worm farm.

We have moved our education activities for children to the refugee camps. We have set up marine environmental education games, drawing and colouring, and have carried our audio visual equipment to show films to the children at Camp. Generous donations from friends, colleagues, and families have been used to support our marine environmental education program at this difficult time.  We hope the situation will get better, but there is a huge degree of uncertainty, which prevents the volcano activity status from being lowered again, and causes widespread stress.  No one knows if and when the volcano will erupt, so the refugees could potentially be spending many weeks or even months in the refugee centres. Support (not only donations, but also books, drawing materials, water bottles etc.) will always be welcome to help the children to have a less traumatic time!

Greetings from Bali!

Three fresh graduate University students, Nyka from Jogjakarta, Hani from Purwokerto, (both in Central Java). and Vany from Padang (West Sumatra) spent three months conducting internships from June to August at our Centre. Nyka helped with our marine and environment education program for local schools. Hani assisted in our preliminary project to breed ornamental shrimp, and Vany helped in our monitoring of the ornamental fish program. The purpose of the internships was for the interns to gain work experience, and also to learn about aspects of our community development program, which is one of the main focus programs of our Centre.

From July to August, the Centre hosted three Australian volunteers from the Universities of Murdoch and Western Australia. In addition, there were four students from the University of Cendana, Kupang, in Timor. The three interns, three volunteers and two students from Kupang were all female, and working with the nine women workers who come from Les village and work at the Centre provided a wonderful opportunity for all of them to interact and learn about each other’s lives, as they all came from very different backgrounds.

One activity which was initiated by Nyka and Karis, an intern from Murdoch University, was the painting of a mural with an underwater theme on the walls of the Centre. The activity created an opportunity for a wonderful collaboration, and the beautiful mural has been used as one of the awareness materials at the Centre, where people come to learn about marine life.

With best wishes from the LINI team!

Three women from Les village trained at the LINI Aquaculture Training Centre

Greetings from Bali!

A three month training session for three women from from Les village has started in April. One person has been learning the hospitality aspects, while two of them have learned various aspects of aquaculture including to care for newborn clownfish and Banggai Cardinalfish, an endangered endemic species from the Banggai Islands in Central Sulawesi. The caring included preparation of the correct feed for the baby fish, frequently feeding them but not overfeeding them, testing the water quality in the tanks, and cleaning the filters. All of these skills involve teaching the concept of regular maintenance, and were taught to the women by our trainers, who are also women from Les village who have previously received training.

The Centre recently hosted Sariga and Anju, two Students from Cochin University, Kerala, India, who took part in a one-month training program from 14th May until 14th June, This training programme aimed to teach them on-site about marine ornamental fish aquaculture, coral reef restoration, and fish identification techniques.

The Centre was visited by Sunrise school from Denpasar, the returning group of Eco Karma project, and two students from the Atmajaya University Jogjakarta. We look forward to seeing more individuals and groups visiting and staying at our Centre during the coming year.

With best wishes from the LINI team!

Links:

• News update from LATC

Greetings from Bali!

Four University students from Denpasar stayed at the Centre for almost four weeks in January, to gain work experience as part of their academic program. They learned all aspects of how to keep fish healthy and productive, from local staff. The staff, who are wives of fishermen, previouly learned these techniques at the Centre, and are now reponsible for caring for the ornamental fish there. Their work includes preparation of the correct feed for the baby fish, frequently feeding them but not overfeeding them, testing the water quality in the tanks, and cleaning the filters.

This month, the staff have been practising their English speaking skills with help from Mischa, a volunteer who will stay in Les village for the next two months. The staff are very eager to improve their English so that they can share the progress we have made in our Centre with our steady flow of visitors from abroad.

With best wishes from the LINI team!

Season's greetings !

It is time to send an update to our supporters about the wonderful progress from our training centre. Since the launch of our centre, we have had visitors from schools, both international and national, Government staff, tourists, and villagers from surrounding the centre. The staff at the centre, who are people from Les village, are very grateful and happy with the visits, when they can share what they have been doing in their breeding of the Banggai cardinalfish, and learn how to tell their stories. From these steady visits, three young women are keenly developing their communication skills. Since September, Putu, Kadeki and Mini have been practising their English with our visitors and learning how to explain the centre’s work.

Within the breeding program, another four young women continue to nurture the Banggai cardinalfish. Since September last year, there have been over 1000 cardinalfish babies born. These babies have now found new homes in aquariums across the UK and USA. We are now starting to learn how to breed clownfish, which requires us learning many new things, such as how to prepare food for the fish larvae of clownfish, and how to pair them so that they can breed.

Our organic community garden has also been very fruitful this year, with more vegetables available for the staff and community members. We do the cooking together with types of veggies that are new to the villagers, who enjoy the pesto from our basil very much! The cherry tomatoes are also a new wonder for them, as many of them have not seen these tiny tomatoes before.

Our reef restoration program continues this year, adding 57 more structures, donated from a variety of supporters. Some corals that were bleached, caused by a long period of raised surface sea temperatures (the El Niño phenomenon) have recovered. Our visitors have helped with new coral plantings, and we are grateful for all the help we have received this year.

We look forward to seeing more individuals and groups visiting and staying at our Centre during the coming year.

Happy New Year and may 2017 bring joys, good health, happiness and prosperity.
With best wishes from the LINI team!