Lan, Traditional Fishing Equipment

Fishing? Do you like fishing? I like fishing very much. 

What do you know  about fishing? How important it is?

Fishing is an activity that every person like doing as a hobby when have free time and normally they do it at weekends or holiday. Fishing is the best outdoor activity. I remember when I was young I think in around 1994, I went out fishing for money to supported my own study, sometime I need to stayed in forest with my uncle or my friend to caught fish about one or two nights then comeback  with 10-15 kilograms of fishes and could earn about 6000 Riel (equal 1.50 USD) per kilogram, happy with money and wow! that was hard work for me as a 12 years old child to traveled in a long more than 30 kilometers by bike cycle, but I like it you know. What kind of equipment did I used? Okay, we used traditional fishing equipment during that time but we could caught fish.



Last weekends, I went to Stung Treng province for field work in Krobey Chrum then continue to Sreko village in Sesan district, visited some communities there. when arrived at Sreko  which located along the Sesan river, I saw an old lady was making Lan under her house. Lan is called by Lao language which Cambodian people known as Tom. Normally, she make it when someone order or want to buy. She could earn 3 USD from  a Lan. 

What is Lan?
Lan, is one of traditional equipment that made from bamboo, vine, or rattan. It will take 3-5 days to finish this equipment and available to use during 1-3 years. Lan can use every season to catch fish from rivers, and streams with rice dust as a baits for fish attraction. Lan could catch one  or two kilograms of fish and mostly are small fish. They normally put in the river or stream in the evening and leave it for a night then check it on early morning at the next day for fish collection.


Did you know that?
A Community base research report stated that; for Ratanakiri community living along the Sesan, Srepok and Sekong Rivr, fishing activity is main activity and communities use traditional fishing gear to catch fish. More than this, some communities like doing rice paddy and farming to grow soil been, sesame, tobacco, vegetable and other plants. In the past, they was like using traditional equipment, there are about 11 of them are appears in  the local  village. (Community based research report on fishing equipment, page21),

In the report also wrote stated that villagers complain about their livelihood along Sesan River is changed especially fishing activity dam construction of Yali fall dam in Vietnam at upstream of Cambodia. For communities who lives along the Sesan River fishing activity in source of earning money and also food for them, but number of fishes are decreasing almost impossible to catch by tradition fishing gear which they used to use long time ago. Now some people turn to do other activities to feed their lives; do rice paddy, grow plants because they cannot catch fish from river as before. Communities cannot catch fish with traditional fishing gear anymore, so they turn to use illegal fish gear seems like, electric, poison drug and bomb… Bombs are used to happen before government forbid weapon. Fishing by drug and electric is increase which destroyed fish and other lives being in river. These activities have happened since 1995. We could not  only see present traditional fishing equipment appear in the villages along the 3S Rivers. "Dam changed our nature and our lives".(Community based research report on change of fishing equipment, )

Srekor is a village that located along the Sesan river and upstream of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam which will cause negative social and environmental impacts and this village is also located in the reservoir size of the project and need to settlements when the construction start. Presently, this village still could catch fish by some traditional equipment, but let's imagine that what will happen to them within  using these traditional fishing equipment after the Lowe Sesan II hydropower dam construction start? Could it catch fish as before or would be the same to what community in Ratanakiri complaining? So, wait to see what is the reality of changing before and after the dam construction. 

 The End and Thanks for reading