Bajau is one of the strange tribes in the world, where people’s lives are spent year-round floating on rivers and without a nationality.
As a semi-nomadic tribe, they live scattered in Southeast Asia from Indonesia to the Philippines and Malaysia.
The Bajau people are known as “talented free divers” with outstanding free diving abilities. They are protectors of the sea because Their lives are completely linked to the ocean. Their traditions and customs revolve around protecting the sea.
“We inherited the sea and the art of diving from our ancestors” said Ms. Ima Baineng. Bajau fishermen said.
Regardless of gender and age, Bajau boys, girls and children all love diving. They can spend 8 hours a day just diving deep into the sea. Some people even spend up to 60% of their time underwater.
Mr. Saiful is a professional diver Industry describes how the Bajau people dive “like dancing” and move very slowly. Even though he is an experienced diver, Mr. Saiful can only go down to about 5m at a time while this tribe can dive at a depth of 12m to 15m. This makes the “mermaid” tribe unique.
It is known that Bajau children practice free diving from a very young age. There are children who are only 3 or 4 years old and have followed their parents to the beach and practiced diving. Their life revolves around hunting fish using rudimentary homemade fishing tools. In addition to fishing, they also dive to find pearl sea cucumbers or sea urchins, rare products to exchange for food on the mainland.
Because they have lived by the sea for centuries but are far away from modern life, this tribe is little known. They live many lives connected to the ocean but do not belong to any country. Because they are stateless, Bajau people do not have citizenship rights with the social benefits that a normal person deserves.
The affected environment causes many changes to the life of the “mermaid” tribe. People have destroyed the coral where fish lay their eggs, so the amount of fish is no longer as abundant as before. We, from our ancestors’ time until now, have always been the protectors of the sea,” a tribe member affirmed.
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