The seas of Southeast Asia have long provided humans with fish, shrimps, squids, whales, pearl oysters, sea cucumbers, and a multitude of other animals that they have collected and captured for medicine, oil, jewellery, and, above all else, food. But a profound change has taken place in the relationship between humans and the riches of the sea. Until the early 1900s most of the sea had been barely touched by fishing. When the demand for fish and other marine animals rose or the supply fell, there was always a new fishing ground to exploit and there were very few impediments to moving on to new fishing grounds. By extending the frontier of fisheries, moving on to new fishing grounds and, as part of this movement, exploiting more and more of the diverse ecosystems that make up the seas of Southeast Asia, fishers brought about spectacular increases in the harvest of fish, shrimps, and other marine animals, particularly in the decades right after World War II. By the 1990s, however, nearly all of the three-dimensional sea was being exploited, catches had fallen sharply in many areas, and the freedom to move from one fishing ground to another had been severely curtailed. Tracing and explaining this transformation is the purpose of this book.

This history focuses on the act of fishing itself — what is caught, how it is caught, how much is caught, who it is caught by, and especially when and where it is caught — but we must see this act as part of a complex set of economic relations. “To use a particular type of gear to seek a particular fish”, argues Emmerson, “is to become involved in a unique set of economic transactions that radiate backward and forward in space and time from the place and moment of capture”. In one direction, those who capture fish and other forms of marine life operate gear that they have made with their own labour, purchased from their savings, or acquired on some form of credit or that is the property of other individuals or of firms.