Tug-of-Life

Tonle Sap is a huge lake in the heart of Cambodia, a broad but shallow lake that shrinks and swells almost beyond belief with the seasons, and the main source of fish for all of Cambodia. The lake has a complicated role with the Mekong River- during the dry season, water flows out of Tonle Sap into the Mekong, and out to sea; during the monsoon season, the current in the Tonle Sap River reverses directions and Mekong water flows into the lake. The lake serves as a flood control for the lower Mekong, as well as a nursery for many of the fish that eventually enter the river. In return, the Mekong provides the lake with new water each year, and included in this liquid package is all the good and bad debris carried down from upriver.

Just because it’s a nursery doesn’t mean that Tonle Sap is off-limits to heavy fishing pressure. For communities like the “floating village” of Chong Kneas, fishing is the only game in town. Fishing and Chong Kneas are as related as the chicken and egg: they come tegether, and it’s certain that if you removed either one of the pair, the other would disappear.

Chong Kneas is not far from Seap Reap, which in turn is near the spectacular mecca of ancient temples known as Angkor Wat, and so the Midas’ touch of western tourists is not unknown along the northeastern shores of Tonle Sap. Tour companies actually offer short boat trips out to the floating village, allowing tourists to marvel at how “terribly poor people make a living, without ever walking on land,” as one European lady explained to me, before returning to the comforts of Seam Reap. I was convinced her description was lacking.

After a moto (motorcycle taxi) ride, and despite the better efforts of a smooth-talking Khmer boat owner (who was hoping he could get me to pay for another ride out the next day), I managed to work out a deal to stay with a family living in a floating house, in the constantly shifting, floating assembly of houses, floating stores, floating school, and floating churches known collectively as Chong Kneas. If you don’t like your neighbors, just pull up anchor and move to a new part of town for free.

Just on the short trip out to where town was currently located (the entire community shifts according to water level and fish harvests), I’d seen some creative variations on familiar fishing styles. I’d watched a motorized canoe pull one end of a tightly woven net up the middle of a stream, while two men scrambled to manhandle the other end of the net- attached to a big vertical stick- up the muddy river bank. At times one of the fishermen would jump in the water to clear a snag from the net, and the tow would continue. Canoe trawling? There were many fish traps cut into the riverbank, men tossing castnets from the shallows, and men dipnetting from canoes with huge triangular hand nets. Once reaching the lake, I could see complex fish weirs, made of wooden stakes driven into the muddy bottom, designed to corral traveling fish into a holding pen. Gillnets were set and marked with bamboo or bottle buoys. Far offshore, the occasional cluster of boats broke up the smooth horizon line, with no shore visible across the immense lake.

My new host, Mr. Gran, is the boss-man for a four-boat seining operation. Only a few minutes after showing up on his watery doorstep, I was the mute add-on to the 15-man crew, headed for (slightly) deeper waters. All of these four boats were stout and wide, open wooden craft between 25 and 30 feet. Two of the boats had power- diesel auto engines- and two of the boats were without any motors. Mr. Gran runs the larger of the two powered boats, which serves as tugboat in transit, provides power when making a set, and carries all of the fish in it’s hold or on deck. The other powered boat is what would be called the skiff in the parlance of seiners. The larger of the unpowered boats holds the entire net. The smaller of the unpowered boats is stationed between the skiff’s tow line and the start of the fishing net, and the fisherman in this boat is responsible for keeping a large pole, attached to the edge of the net, vertical and hard on bottom.

I should note that for the few of you reading this who are familiar with seining, my description will sound simplified and boring. For anyone not familiar with seining, this will sound confusing and boring. Might as well skip the bore, no matter who you are! (In case you’re still reading, a few people have asked me to explain…) Seining is rodeo fishing. You locate a concentration of fish, either through divine intervention, experience, or dumb luck, and then circle a net around the school of fish. A seine net is designed to be of small enough mesh such that fish can’t pass through (this would be a worthless net) or even pass through partially and get stuck (this would be a gillnet). Many seine nets, designed to catch salmon, herring, or anchovy among others, are designed with the ability to cinch up the bottom of the net before the entire net is hauled aboard. Aptly named, these are purse seines, and allow for fishermen to close off the downward escape option for fish caught within the net.

A seine can be set in a variety of different shapes, proven through years of trial and error to be effective at one time or another. A “hook” is more or less a stationary set, often with one end of the net hard against shore, and with the other end of the net looping back (a-la-hook) to discourage wandering fish from simply swimming outside of this offshore end of the net. A “tow” is a set where the seine net is used in a similar fashion to (floating) trawl net, moving a smiling net through the water before closing up. A “roundhaul” is where the net is immediately set in a circle around what is hoped to be a lively patch of water. “Closing up” any set- a hook, tow, or roundhaul- involves bringing both ends of the net together, at which time the net should be more or less circular. At this time the net is hauled back with the aid of power blocks, and the skiff goes to work with a towline attached to the main boat, keeping the net in an orderly circular shape and the boat and net in good position relative to the other.

Enough of the dry generics! I mention it only because the seining deal on Tonle Sap is unique. The net is extremely long- at last twice the length of an Alaska salmon seine net- probably stretching over half a mile if laid out straight. It isn’t a purse net but instead takes advantage of the fact that the lake is rarely deeper than two or three meters, and so the net stretches the whole water column and the bottom of the lake blocks any downward escape. Three smaller boats take the place of one big one, the sweat and backache of 12 men hauling the gear replaces heavy rigging, oil, and a deck crew of three. Without fancy boats or gear, this low-tech fishing cooperative is capable of making seven or eight sets a day, which any old hand in the seining world will admit isn’t a cakewalk.

With a hand signal from Mr. Gran, off peels the skiff, which until now is the last of the four boats in tow. Attached to the skiff is a stout tow line, which is attached to the leading end of the net with a large wooden pole. As the pole pays out, one fisherman in the smallest unpowered boat goes out with it, pole in hand, assigned with the talk of keeping this end of the net vertical and ensuring the net stretches all the way to the bottom. The bulk of the crew is piled into the net-carrying boat, and they make sure the net pays out smoothly, while their boat is towed along by the one and only Mr. Gran. In 10 minutes Gran loops all the way around and passes inside of the skiff. A boy from the net-carrying boat jumps overboard and swims with a tag line to tie in to the corkline, around 50 meters up from the beginning of the net. At this point Mr. Gran’s big boat takes over the pole-tending duty from the smallest boat, and all free hands join in hauling the net, hand-over-hand, shaking fish caught in the net back into the watery ring as they go.

Heave away, boys! Endless hauling, pulling back hundreds of meters of heavy netting, fish and debris through thick water. It’s an eternal game of tug-of-war for these Tonle Sap fishermen. Considering the bloody, war-pocked recent history of Cambodia- many people alive today remember losing family, parents, or friends to Pol Pot’s genocide and civil war- a better description of the fishing struggle here might be the tug-of-life.

After over an hour of sweaty hauling, the crew has hauled all but the final 50 meters of net. The skiff powers the net and boat in a sweeping arch, forcing all fish hard against the net, and quickly the crew skips a small portion of the net where most of the fish are concentrated, the end pole (held by Mr. Gran’s boat) is now simultaneously pivoted to be horizontal and flush with the surface of the water, and the crew speedily hauls in the last bit of the net. When finished the big boat and the net-carrying boat are rail to rail, but the fish are caught in a pocket of net, now tucked underneath the net-carrying boat. This 50-meter section of net is transferred to the big boat (“backstacked” for all ye seiners), and then the net, starting with the fish-rich pocket, is slowly hauled onto the net-carrier. All the while a portion of the net lies in the water between the two boats, and the fish ball is sort of rolled along, getting thicker and denser all the while, the catfish getting caught in the mesh by their stubborn barbs and needing to be constantly shaken out of the net. At last the “money bag” of fish is ready to be scooped out with a brailer (a heavy hand net designed for this). The previous two hours of toil is now measurable in thin silver slices and tired backs.

What fin-filled bounty does 30 man-hours of sweat, sifting a five-acre patch of Tonle Sap, look like when laid out on deck? About like 300 pounds of assorted minnows, a couple dozen fish larger than finger-length, a few hundred small prawn, a couple of water snakes, a few sticks, a hundred odd pound of rocks and snail shells to return to Davy Jones. Sort the catch out and let’s do it again! With a couple bowls of rice, a little fish soup, and a couple of dozen cigarettes, these Tonle Sap seiners seem happy to continue their version of the tug-of-life forever.