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By Himanshu Bhatt. ANYONE driving past the Sungai Gelugor shoreline along the Jelutong Expressway must find it difficult to keep the heart from skipping a beat, at the sight that now greets Penangites. What was once a tranquil coastline overlooking the Penang Channel, with the vision of the bridge as a backdrop, has now been gobbled up by mountains of sand for a massive reclamation project.
No one has been the worst hit by this development than the inshore fisherfolk who have for years been fishing in the area. Since the past year when the project went into high gear, the fishermen have found their daily catch reduced by some 90%. But this Sungai Gelugor coastline is not the only place to have been so affected in recent times, and it certainly does not seem to be the last. About a decade ago, one of the oldest fishing settlements in Penang was severely affected, when the Tanjung Tokong coastline was filled up for a luxury township project. Today, the 300-year-old Kampung Tanjung Tokong residents face an eviction battle as a government developer plans to build a mammoth housing project on their village land, right in front of the reclaimed township. Mention Penang and chances are you will hear of high-tech industrial zones, world-class manufacturing plants and famous tourist spots. But Penang’s oldest industry is, ironically, also one of the island’s least known. Centuries before English sea captain Francis Light stepped on the shores of our turtle-shaped island, there were only the fisherfolk. Today, this oldest existing livelihood of the island has been badly affected by pollution and a slew of reclamation projects. The modest profession is facing the most critical period in its untold history. Some 5,000 fishermen still defiantly ply the Penang coastlines amid depleting marine harvests and seawater degradation. The future is hardly promising for them, many of whom use sampans equipped with small outboard motors. Ironically enough, few places can be as symbolic of the community’s struggles as Gurney Drive – where one of the earliest known fishing villages once existed. It was here that the Bagan Jermal fishing settlement used to exist a few hundred years back. The community is now long gone and the shoreline has been sullied by muddy erosion due to changing tidal patterns. And it is this site that yet another gigantic reclamation project looms, as the concessionaire for the impending Penang Outer Ring Road lobbies for the government’s approval to reclaim the entire Gurney Drive coastline. While there is concern about marine life being inevitably wiped out by such reclamation, there are also other more worrying environmental implications. Few people realise this, but by removing so much sea space, tidal patterns are being drastically affected. Inshore fishermen have over the last decade complained of giant tidal waves that have smashed small coastal buildings on both sides of the Penang channel. Such a phenomenon had hardly been seen before. In fact, the Gurney Drive area was also at the centre of a stormy controversy about illegal mud-dumping by commercial barges. The issue may sound trivial, but barges have illegally dumped into Penang’s seas literally tonnes of mud from coastal development projects. What makes the problem worse is that the mud, dumped indiscriminately into the deep waters, is pushed to the shore by coastal tides. Some 50 species of fish have been endangered due to muddy waters along the island’s northern coastline. Marine species such as the milk-fish (Lactarius lactarius), catfish (Arius sp), otek (Tachysurus utik), leather jacket or ikan lembu (Ostracion cornutus) and even the swordfish (Xiphias) have been severely depleted. In the course of my reporting, I once befriended an elderly fisherman, Saidin Hussain, who headed the Penang Inshore Fishermen’s Welfare Association – a small rag-tag army of fisherfolk who tried to move to the forefront of a battle to protect Penang’s fragile coastal environment. Though Saidin died a couple of years back, I have kept records of interviews conducted with him, and memories of the few investigative trips he took me on, out into the sea on his wooden boat. “Mother Earth has given us so much richness,” Saidin once told me in his simple northern Malay dialect. “But we shamelessly destroy it all without any regard. The sea means everything to us. It provides our very living. We will fight to protect this sea that has fed us.” Tragically enough – with the way our coasts are being damaged and obliterated – the struggles of traditional fisherfolk like the late Saidin may seem to have been in vain. But the community’s effort hits at the core of Penang’s environmental future, and the very destiny of its people. Though it may seem to be a losing battle, it may well be a “fight” that every Penangite has a stake in. **Republished with permission. This article first appeared in the Oct 8, 2009 issue of theSun. Himanshu is newspaper's Penang bureau chief.
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