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Flourinshing Cottage Industry

According to a report by Stephen Nash of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, an old Allied ammo dump in the Padaido Islands has been the source of a cottage industry supplying the fish bombs used in Biak and the Cenderawasih Bay, and may supply powder to markets as far away as western Indonesia. The report was written several years ago, and at the time the supply of easily-found shells was running out. But the author feared that scuba gear, brought to Biak to equip collectors of tropical marine fish, would make accessible new supplies of bombs.

The Padaido islanders are masters of the very delicate art of live bomb recovery. The shells are found by dragging the sandy bottom with a piece of iron tied to a rope. When it is felt to hit something hard, a diver puts on goggles and dives to the bottom—18 meters—ties the bomb to the rope, and returns to the surface. Then the bomb is hauled up. Once on land, the bomb is carefully opened, and the priming mixture and cordite are extracted for packaging and sale.