Aruna with Astra International Towards a Healthy Marine Life
If you love traveling, let’s get ready to visit this area! Tanjung Batu village is an exciting tourist location that you need to visit in the country. After the pandemic though.
Tanjung Batu village is located in Berau district. Since many years before, the village of Tanjung Batu has been recognised as one of the entrances to visit this beautiful archipelago. Apart from going through Tarakan, the entrance and exit to the islands in eastern Kalimantan is the Port of Tanjung Batu, Berau, East Kalimantan. Moving a bit further, from Tanjung Batu village, you can take a speed boat to visit the Derawan Islands.
One of the best sites to visit is the hygienic processing of rajungan by local residents. Rajungan, Portunus Pelagicus, is the main commodity of Tanjung Batu coastal economy. How does this product go far away to North America? Let’s get acquainted with Tanjung Batu village.
Crab Export to North America
The residents of Tanjung Batu village depend on their source of income from ecosystems both on land and sea. The land area is fairly small. According to BPS (2015), the land area of this village is only about 675.72 square kilometers while the sea area is much wider because it reaches 2,405.87 square kilometers or almost 4 times the land area. Therefore, local residents rely on the sea as a source of life. One of the important commodities produced in this village is this special crab.
This high quality crab meat draws public attention both local and international, including the North American importer.
To keep it in its best quality, the crabs are not distributed right away. For this matter, the local women community helps to chop the meat, pack it, and put it in a hygienic can to maintain the quality. This processing is part of the job carried out at the Aruna fisheries center.
Remarkably, the fishing gear of the fishermen in this village is quite capable of realizing sustainable fisheries. This form of concern for the environment shows that they really participate in protecting the marine environment.
Astra International is one of the supporting parties. Their support is established as a program called Desa Sejahtera Astra (DSA). Since 2019, this program has provided funding for various community development activities.
Yayasan Maritim Nusantara Lestari
Aruna together with the Maritim Nusantara Lestari Foundation (YMNL) transformed this fund to provide supporting assets that could be useful to boost productivity. The assets such as boat engines and fishing gear are given to coastal communities for free. In addition, fishermen in this village are actively participating in community empowerment programs. YMNL also runs many other programs such as socialization of marine products, fisherman incentive programs, and product processing training programs.
In addition, the development of the potential of human and natural resources is also a special agenda. To make it happen, the residents of Tanjung Batu village received regular assistance from Aruna and YMNL. On the bottom line, this foundation is focused on empowering coastal communities with targeted programs. The goal, of course, is that the existing assistance can be maximized for the long term sake.
I sell my crabs to Aruna because I got paid fairly. The foundation also provided me with new fishing gear, and medical equipment, so that I can keep my productivity during this pandemic,” said Harmoko, a loyal member of Aruna fishermen community.
One of the programs that was recently carried out was counseling about the importance of the Covid-19 vaccination. Last weekend, the fishermen were invited to do community service as well as given free medical check up and medical equipment. As always, this activity was held by the Maritim Nusantara Lestari Foundation which accommodates support from Aruna. In this series of activities, a fisherman’s cooperative was also formed. So, whilst maintaining the sustainability of marine products, the health of the community is also a top priority.
