The sea people

In the contemporary world it is hard to visualise ourselves living our lives on the ocean. The only time we could think ........... is when we go on a holiday cruise.

But............ we have amongst ourselves, communities living in the open waters. On houseboats and stilt houses built on coral reefs. The Orang Lant community living on the coasts of Malaysia and Bajan community living between Borneo and Sulawesi islands are also known as sea gypsies. These groups travel along the coastal routes in Asia. The Orang Lant and Bajan’s have no nationalities as they live all their lives on the open ocean. Water is the natural environment for these people and they get land sick when they are on land for a few hours. Their children’s eyesight underwater is remarkably excellent as their eyes have adapted to the liquid (BBC, 2013).

Let’s start watching this video from 40 minutes into the documentary to see the Bajan community in their natural habitat.

Associations with the ocean in the past

In the past rivers were used for inland transportation of goods before roads were built and airplanes have taken over long-distance ocean travel.

According to Andaya(2006) commercial and cultural communities have developed across the oceans that led to Asian countries engaging with Europe in the past. It is known that women have made the voyage single handedly sailing for six long weeks from Australia to England.

Understanding of the ocean and how it has and have shaped the lives in the past and of the Orang Lant and Bajan communities must be studied further to benefit the future with the onset of sea level rise.

I guess ............... adapting ourselves to live in the open oceans would not be that of a hard task.

Majority of us have little appreciation for the importance of the water world.

Okay........... on the next blog I am planning to see the impacts that we could have in the ocean as a result of us adapting to a ‘marine life’.