Developing sustainable fishing vessels for a developing country in the 21 ^ST century

Drawing on six years of field work and research into traditional fishing communities and vessels in the Eastern Archipelago of the Republic of Indonesia the authors describe some of the challenges facing such a development and how one possible solution was put into practice by designing and building two new generation vessels for the Regional Government of Jembrana Bali. The research highlighted the relevance of much traditional boat building practice as well as the high skill level of traditional craftsmen. However due to both poverty, lack of basic education and poor access to information, improved vessel are often sadly deficient in basic requirements. These deficiencies it held can be best turned around by indigenous Technology Transfer projects. Despite the Republic being the world's largest maritime nation with great development potential it is painfully obvious from world experience that no fishery is without limits, "The tragedy of the Commons Syndrome". Developments in technology here must be both appropriate and sustainable. In a country of 250 millions a widespread fisheries collapse would lead to a huge social disaster. In the light of this we will touch upon the imperative to prevent illegal fishing operations. We identified a number of key features that vessels for the future should exhibit.