Love Offerings Help Feed the Hungry Using Floating Fish Nets

While Jean and I were on the Island of Nias (off the west coast of Sumatra) to visit sites where I-K Synod Love Offerings were put to use, we saw what might be a miracle under construction.

One Muslim fishing village had been devastated by the tsunami, and then was leveled four months later in the subsequent earthquake. There were no homes left standing in the village. This was made more serious by the fact that the people of Nias depend on fish for protein and sustenance, and so they depended on the catch of these workers. These Muslim fishermen had lost their boats, their nets, their piers for the boats, and everything else that fed the people on the village, and gave them a livelihood by fishing.

At the recommendation of the HKBP, this fishing village received Love Offering funds to rebuild their fishing occupations and, in the process, help feed the people of the island. Traditional net fishing involved driving long poles into the bottom of the Indian Ocean in a square, with stringers between the corners. They built their traditional fishing platforms, but within two weeks, the entire frame sank below the surface of the water.

These are uneducated fishermen, but people who know their trade and the needs very well. They devised in their minds a system where the net structure would float on plastic barrels on the surface, and because of that, could be towed from bay to bay where the fish were known to be present. A small floating net system was tried, which was eminently successful, far better than their old system.

So the Ecumenical Nias Island Counseling Center requested additional funds to build a much larger floating net system, which we saw under construction on the beach. An island contractor had been hired to oversee the project. Tools ranged from rope lashings to a laser level. They would have the frame finished in two weeks, just in time for the next high tides to assist them in getting it into the water.

They told us that they knew of no other floating frame net system like this anywhere in the world. Their catches in their first, smaller system were beyond all expectations. The beauty of the whole story is that these uneducated fishermen may have developed a new system that will assist in feeding the hungry in tropical island areas all around the world. And our Love Offerings helped make it possible.

Lowell