Tuna fishermen- Batu Boga

The duelling mosques and  crowing poultry, had us underway early , which was good as we had a longish day planned.

Did I mention early start?

well we might be underway early but this guy had come from somewhere even earlier, here he is inbound to the market

Batu Boga (west) was our next planned anchorage.

As it transpired, its a 'des res sleepover ' for the fishermen as well.
On arrival we found half a dozen canoes  at anchor. Sitting more to seaward from the anchored canoes, was a slightly more sturdy vessel, the crew of which indicated we should nose our way closer to the anchored canoes , "no problem ,not in their way".
This fine vessel, was a mothership /bunker station to the fishermen in their canoes.

As we sat watching the sunset,expecting the anchored canoes to begin dispersing for the nights fishing we realised these guys were different. Their day was done and they were in fact cooking their meal before sleeping. More and more canoes arrived at the mothership.

Now we haven't had a lot of success fishing this trip, despite dragging lures for a considerable distance. We have in fact lost a lure up in the Anambas Islands, then the weather was so dire, we didn't bother for a couple of weeks, as I wasn't going to be gutting and cleaning anything that actually suicided on the line in those conditions. Then we just stopped bothering.So the truth is we have caught nothing,zilch, zero, and had concluded it was nothing to do with our pathetic attempts at hunting and gathering, but more so because the seas were devoid of fish. I mean , look at the number of  FAD's we had passed and canoes we daily encounter all buzzing about  trolling lines- obviously there was little to be captured.
Well that convenient myth that we had invented to make ourselves feel less inadequate , was well and truly quashed in Batu Boga .
Canoe after canoe arrived with tuna. BIG tuna. So big I don't actually know how there was room for the fisherman and the tuna in the same canoe! Some had up to three tuna.

Each fish was lifted from canoe to mothership, amidst what we assume was much banter and noise.It  was then weighed, from the scales slung amidship on the mother boat, much scribbling took place and eventually a piece of paper was handed to the fisherman , who then moved off and either anchored or rafted  himself up to another canoe, and settled down for the evening.

They departed to start their day about 0200. We heard the engines ,as one by one they departed.Oddly we didn't see any of them the next day.I wonder how far out to sea they travel to land their catches?