ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Bajau communities of eastern Indonesia are adapting to pressures relating to their lifestyle and resource usage, demonstrating that past strategies to counter these pressures are no longer possible. Bajau communities are defined by their intimate relationship with the marine environment. The deep-rooted and powerful drivers behind the threats facing maritime ecocultures would seem to suggest that the prospects for survival are bleak. The underlying tenet is being increasingly eroded, through the adoption of seaweed farming in many Bajau and other maritime communities throughout South-East Asia, which inevitably results in a diminution of boat access and a gradual enclosure of maritime space. When Bajau communities are forcibly removed from their maritime environment to an urban setting, the unifying cultural ingredient is lost, with severe consequences for individual health and safety. The historic response relocating Bajau communities and fishing activity away from foci of conflict is no longer viable in an increasingly territorialized, planned and regulated marine environment.
