238
WILLIAM MACXAE
uscd as a vegetable, its stem for house posts, piles and fish traps, and
boards may be obtained from the hard outer wood of the stem.
B. Pond cuZture of fish and prawns
I n various parts of South East Asia, notably Java, southern
Sumatra, the Philippines and Taiwan the culture of fish and prawns in
brackish water ponds created out of cleared mangals has been practised
for very many years, in Java for centuries. The only modern, and the
most useful, account of this culture is the detailed study by Schuster
(1952) of the tambaks of Java.
In the making of the fish ponds, known in Java as tambaks, the
mangal has been completely cleared except for the seaward fringes.
These are necessary, firstly as protection against any destructive action
of the sea, and secondly because in most of the area utilized in this way,
accretion is still proceeding rapidly and the presence of the mangroves
of the seaward fringe renders available successive crops of seedlings for
colonization of the new mud banks. Each pond is from 4 to 2 hectares
(1-5 acres) in area, it may vary in shape but is usually narrow in
comparison to its length. The sites of the ponds vary from a few hundred
metres to several kilometres in width. They are most extensive in the
estuaries of the larger rivers. Those farthest from the sea will tend to
be less saline than those behind the mangrove fringe. Each pond
communicates, by way of a sluice gate, with a system of tidal canals.
This enables the ponds to be drained or flooded at suitable stages of the
tide. The banks between, known as “ builds,” are often planted with
mangroves or other useful trees, usually species which can tolerate some
salt. This helps to stabilize the banks. The caretakers of the ponds live
in houses built on the banks and dispose of the manure accumulated
from themselves and from their few domestic animals into the ponds.
Considerable care and ingenuity has gone into the designing of the
ponds and still goes into the cultivation of the soil, and the organisms
which form the basis of the whole industry. The main purpose of the
tambaks is to produce a marketable crop of the milk fish Chanos chanos.
This fish does not breed in the ponds but has to be introduced as fry.
As a subsidiary industry, other people collect the fry on certain sandy
beaches where they are common, and transport them to the villages of
the pond caretakers where the fry are sold and transplanted into
nursery ponds adjacent to the tambaks.
The cycle of production begins with an empty pond, the soil on the
bottom sun baked ; it may have been turned over by digging. The pond
is flooded at a high spring tide, with a screen over the sluice to exclude
as far as possible any predators or their juveniles. The screen does not
WILLIAM MACXAE
uscd as a vegetable, its stem for house posts, piles and fish traps, and
boards may be obtained from the hard outer wood of the stem.
B. Pond cuZture of fish and prawns
I n various parts of South East Asia, notably Java, southern
Sumatra, the Philippines and Taiwan the culture of fish and prawns in
brackish water ponds created out of cleared mangals has been practised
for very many years, in Java for centuries. The only modern, and the
most useful, account of this culture is the detailed study by Schuster
(1952) of the tambaks of Java.
In the making of the fish ponds, known in Java as tambaks, the
mangal has been completely cleared except for the seaward fringes.
These are necessary, firstly as protection against any destructive action
of the sea, and secondly because in most of the area utilized in this way,
accretion is still proceeding rapidly and the presence of the mangroves
of the seaward fringe renders available successive crops of seedlings for
colonization of the new mud banks. Each pond is from 4 to 2 hectares
(1-5 acres) in area, it may vary in shape but is usually narrow in
comparison to its length. The sites of the ponds vary from a few hundred
metres to several kilometres in width. They are most extensive in the
estuaries of the larger rivers. Those farthest from the sea will tend to
be less saline than those behind the mangrove fringe. Each pond
communicates, by way of a sluice gate, with a system of tidal canals.
This enables the ponds to be drained or flooded at suitable stages of the
tide. The banks between, known as “ builds,” are often planted with
mangroves or other useful trees, usually species which can tolerate some
salt. This helps to stabilize the banks. The caretakers of the ponds live
in houses built on the banks and dispose of the manure accumulated
from themselves and from their few domestic animals into the ponds.
Considerable care and ingenuity has gone into the designing of the
ponds and still goes into the cultivation of the soil, and the organisms
which form the basis of the whole industry. The main purpose of the
tambaks is to produce a marketable crop of the milk fish Chanos chanos.
This fish does not breed in the ponds but has to be introduced as fry.
As a subsidiary industry, other people collect the fry on certain sandy
beaches where they are common, and transport them to the villages of
the pond caretakers where the fry are sold and transplanted into
nursery ponds adjacent to the tambaks.
The cycle of production begins with an empty pond, the soil on the
bottom sun baked ; it may have been turned over by digging. The pond
is flooded at a high spring tide, with a screen over the sluice to exclude
as far as possible any predators or their juveniles. The screen does not