ABSTRACT
D uring a tour o f Taiwan lasting some three weeks in August and September 1997 which I made in the company o f Dr. David Faure, we visited Lanyu or O rchid Island (also known as Botel Tobago) from September 10 through 12. The two evenings we were there we had supper in the home o f Mr. Shiyman Feaien (Kuo C h ien -p ’ing) and his wife in the village o f Iraralay (Lang Tao). O n the Ilth, he accompanied us on a tour o f the island, including among items o f interest the nuclear waste disposal plant against which he had helped lead a demonstration in 1995. O n that evening, before being shown an hour and a half long video o f the demonstration and upon request, I showed slides o f the eastern Indonesian whaling and fishing village o f Lamalera, Lembata about which I had recently written a book (Barnes 1996)- In return he showed us slides o f Yami fishing ritual and house building. Fortunately, given my lack o f any o f the relevant languages, Shiyman Feaien has good English. Whaling is not part o f the Yami fishery, and my hosts could not understand why Lamalera bothers to take whales. My attempts to explain did not satisfy them. When I m entioned that like the Yami, people in Lamalera catch flying fish and said that at certain seasons a single man in a boat might catch as many as 200 in a day, their response was that in Lanyu fishing with nets they can catch as many as 2000 in a night. What Lanyu and
Lamalera have in comm on, other than speaking languages o f the Malayo-Polynesian branch o f the Austronesian family and a comm on interest in taking protein from the sea, is a shared tradition o f boat construction.
