RUMAH IKAN

April 2021

What does kayu bakau smell like?
The wood from rhizophora trees with their aerial roots

plunging
like a thousand
fingers
into brackish mangrove waters,
while mudcrabs burrow beneath them.

Inside the guts of those crabs
and beyond their exoskeletons in the wider
tidal mangroves
microbacterial communities flourish
filtering and buffering
invasive pathogens.

What does kayu bakau smell like?

From 7000 miles away

or

nose and fingers pressed against glass, I have no way of knowing.

A friend tells me that bakau sap smells like wood preservative. Another says it smells of childhood freedom, thigh deep in mud, a salty breeze.

And what about daun nipah, the leaves of mangrove palms that grow abundantly
in slow-moving tidal waters?

What do nipah leaves smell like?

A floral sweet smell, that turns sourish when exposed. A boat down an estuary, fireflies. The chemical compounds in its floral scent contains fatty acid derivatives, terpenoids, carotenoid derivatives and benzenoids.

I ask the same questions on whatsapp to Pak Uning Laut, the third brother of the sea. After all, it’s because of his rumah ikan, the houses he makes for fish, that I wanted to know.

Ha…ha…datang sini, he replies. Not bad, like bamboo. After it’s been in water for 2 or 3 weeks then you can smell it. Ikan suka.

**

Jun 2021

Most of these videos are Pak Uning’s, filmed across several months before and after the landas monsoon season, trying to triangulate between my questions, his process and the sea what rumah ikan is.

to show his process of making rumah ikan, of making structures out of kayu bakau fringed with nipah palms, of putting them into the sea, of fishing around the rumah ikan. Around these exchanges we discuss…

**

Jul 1967

A curator said:
It is the cycle of the sun in the year and its seasons, of the moon in its monthly and daily cycle of tides and their breezes. This overhead pair play an overwhelming important part in the day (and night) of coastal and riverine life. Between musim tedoh, calm summer, and musim landas, the monsoon. The stars are mere subsidiaries...

**

March 2021
Pak Uning Laut whatsapps me photos of his catch, day after day.

Ikan merah, red snapper
Ikan cencaru, torpedo scad
ikan tenggiri, king mackerel
ikan bawang putih, silver pomfret
ikan bawang hitam, black pomfret
ikan pari, sting ray
ikan parang, dorab wolf herring
ikan ketarap, parrot fish,
ikan kerapu, grouper

I AM the pawang lah, laughs Pak Uning Laut. Tidak tahu lah, maybe a long long time ago….

When it should be dry season, it’s rainy season.
Where the rainy season was, there is dry season.
Warming seas, less fish, less cuttlefish.

[And what if Pak Uning Laut really was a pawang?
What kind of conjuring tool is rumah ikan?
No it’s not a trap, he reiterates.
Is it a lure? A machine, a museum?]

The Forestry Department runs a coral reef restoration project across the length of the coastline, huge balls of concrete punctuated with openings - fish holes - that encourage new coral ecosystems to take root, which in turn absorb calcium and carbon dioxide from the acidifying water. The reef balls are lifted by crane from government barges, and gently settled on the sea bed. I watch the livestream on youtube, captivated by its methodical slowness and enthusiasm. Multipurposeful.

Pak Uning explains that when he dives to check the health of coral reefs and the reef balls, one of the small jobs he does for the Forestry Department, he never fishes under water, for example by spearfishing - not his alam. Alam in Malay means nature, realm, world. Natural history muzium, muzium alam semulajadi. Turtles, haiwan dua alam, animals of two worlds, water and land.

He only fishes above water from his boat. What about the bajau laut and the orang laut, other communities who do fish underwater? - Pak Uning shrugs - with all the precision of the haze - different alam.

He got the idea for rumah ikan while helping on these dives, making worlds for marine ecologies.

**

The seedling of a thought for rumah ikan ricochets off a concrete reefball across the intertidal zone up the streams and creeks to the mangroves. Resonates through the nipah fronds sends them quivering releasing terpenoids and benzenoids at the thought of submersion, resounds off the bakau trunks, vibrates in the guts of mudcrabs. An experiment places logs together, threads long nipah leaves with rope, a gesture from one alam to another.

Ongoing experiments with matter, with weight and manouverability, sustainability and longevity.

An interplay between sun, shape, shadows and fish sensibilities.

It’s trial and error, negotiating across alam to make houses for fish.

/

At the waters’ surface, GPS on his phone indicates the location of the buoy. A precision of satellite and sea. The buoy sits at the top of a rope that sinks 38 metres below sea level, strung with fronds of daun nipah all the way down to the rumah ikan on the sea floor. After two weeks in the water, rumah ikan takes on a new smell, advertising its presence, welcoming all in. Plankton, crustacea, molluscs, small fish and bigger fish congregate, tantalised by the waving nipah, and its opportunities for shelter, food, hiding and hunting.

In the open sea, Pak Uning says, with no reef or rock, it’s difficult for ikan to stop and take cover. When you build something the fish will stay there and hunt small fish playing near the daun nipah.

**

A curator said:

..knowledge is not so much of place as of movement - over, under and through place.

**

**

Only one rumah ikan survived the monsoon season. Restless tides and moons fold in. Rumah ikan bend and fold too, ropes snap, kayu bakau buckles and / untethered becomes a floating driftwood ecosystem riding the currents before coming to rest on neighbouring beaches.

The amorphous boundaries between forest, river, tree and sea.

**

Nearer the islands, listening with one ear through a lightweight oar to the water below, another alam: a harder noise - tak tak tak tak tak - translates as a big rock, and certain fish habitats. A small rock makes another noise, - tik tik tik - listening to microhabitats like a doctor through a stethoscope.

**

Time folds, rocks fold, the tide is restless

A photograph from the Sarawak Museum:1961 Two men stand on the edge of a boat, tipping turtle hatchlings from a crate into the sea / a cigarette dangles in the mouth of the man in the foreground / the turtles cascade into the waves

A photograph from the Sarawak Museum:
1961

Two men stand on the edge of a boat, tipping turtle hatchlings from a crate into the sea / a cigarette dangles in the mouth of the man in the foreground / the turtles cascade into the waves