Drugs to dugongs: The Indonesian marine conservationist who transformed his life—and the seabeds around him

Onesimus Laa laughs, then slaps his large wrinkled  hands together twisting them tightly. He could be wringing out dripping-wet washing, but he’s demonstrating how he once snapped people’s necks for a living. His laughter though, doesn’t reach his dark deep-set eyes. Onesimus, also called Pac One, used to be a member of Jakarta’s most feared gang. Led by notorious criminal and political figure, Hercules Rozario, the mob controlled the inner city’s underworld.

We’re sitting opposite one another on a low-lying wall near the sparkling waters of Mali Beach, Kabola Bay in Alor Island. The neighboring country, Timor-Leste sits some 45 nautical miles away across the Alor Archipelago. It’s taken eight days to sail here with SeaTrek Sailing Adventures on the Ombak Putih (‘White Wave’), a traditional handmade Indonesian phinisi schooner (a sailing boat with two masts) from Labuan Bajo, the gateway to the famed Komodo dragon of Komodo National Park. We’ve crossed part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of around 750 active volcanoes stretching some 24,800 miles (40,000 kilometers) across the Pacific Ocean.

Excited about the prospect of seeing dugongs in the Alor Archipelago, I’d researched conservation practices on Alor Island—that’s how I heard about about Onesimus, and how he helped save Kabola Bay’s marine life, namely dugongs. But delving deeper had led me to his previous ‘career’. Intrigued, I’d arranged to meet him.

His burliness unnerves me—I just hope the words ‘outstanding heart’ printed on his T-shirt bare some truth. Curious about his past, I ask how he became involved with Rozario, the gang’s head honcho. His face transforms. He looks anguished and I’m about to find out why.

Back in 1986, when Onesimus was a low-paid, 25-year-old fisherman, he left Alor to find work in Jakarta; he needed a way to support his wife and two young daughters. But work wasn’t easy to come by, even in the capital. He soon heard about ‘Hercules Rozario’, a name that often came up as a first contact for new arrivals seeking work in Jakarta. Desperate young men would turn to the gang leader for work, a roof over their heads—and protection. It was how Hercules lured them in; in return, they became loyal gang members.

“I was implicated in so much corruption, gambling, prostitution, but never got caught,’’ he says when I ask if he was ever incarcerated. I learn that the powerful gang dominated the underworld. The mob had some military protection because Rozario once served with the Indonesian special forces and had ‘connections’. I dig deeper. While some things stay under the rug, I manage to catch Onesimus off-guard when I ask how he feels about this period in his life. “I’m so embarrassed, I’ve hurt so many people,” he says, in between sobs.

Instinctively, I gently touch his huge arms. It seems to calm him. A silence settles between us. He explains his wife and eldest daughter had to collect candlenuts (a tree nut used in Asian dishes) from Alor’s forests for their income. “I felt bad, I never went home to visit my family, neither did I support them,” he says. “I started praying. I wanted my family to see me as a good person, to leave something behind for my daughters, to be remembered for making change.”

And then, life began to change. “Everyone noticed the coastal areas improving,” he says. His body language changes; he sits up, taller, prouder. “I was so glad to see everyone could fish closer to their homes.”

One day, after a few years away, he decided to simply leave Jakarta. But returning wasn’t easy either. “When I came back, people hated me because I what I did, so I moved to nearby Sikka Island with my wife and daughters, away from everyone else.” He pauses, looking up into the trees, gaining composure, gathering his thoughts.

“When I returned in the early 1990s, I had to support my family, so I went back to fishing.” While working, he tells me he saw locals cutting mangrove trees for building houses, boats and for firewood. Because the trees were being thinned out, he noticed the beach was eroding, seabeds were dying, the water brackish, and fishermen going further for their catch. “So I started planting mangrove trees to help stabilize the shoreline,” he says.

But the more he planted, the more enraged his wife became. She’d ask him, “Why do you plant mangroves? Nobody pays you.” Onesimus says he became so exasperated, she threw all the mangrove seedlings at him at their home.

Onesimus had an unwavering vision though. As he continued to plant seedlings, he noticed a dugong kept following him. Mostly found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and Australian waters, dugongs are also known as ‘sea cows’ and similar to manatees (who use freshwater areas as well as seawater).

Classified as ‘vulnerable’, there are around 100,000 dugongs left in the world—this is down to rising sea temperatures, agricultural pollution affecting food sources, and being hunted for their meat and tears, both believed to have aphrodisiac properties. Centuries-old sailors once confused the fish-tailed dugong or manatee as half-fish, half-human believing it was a siren, a mermaid.

Onesimus took the dugong sighting as a sign, a blessing. Sensing the marine mammal understood his purpose, they became friends. As a ‘lady of the sea’, he named her Mawar (meaning rose)—he’s continued to use this name even after he realized Mawar is actually a male.

And then, things began to change. “Everyone noticed the coastal areas improving,” he says. His body language changes; he sits up, taller, prouder. “I was so glad to see everyone could fish closer to their homes.”

Onesimus tells me the mangrove roots grew, supporting the shoreline, resulting in clear water, shrimps began laying eggs again, fish returned, seagrass blanketed the ocean floor, and seawater levels improved. It took five years of constantly planting trees to see an impact.

Onesimus continued his work, also constructing four water wells to provide villagers with fresh water. His wife, daughters, and the community began planting alongside him. Mawar continued to stay close by. From a life of crime, from crumpling people’s lives, Onesimus started turning his life around, and, through conservation started to become a pillar for change.

Keen to get a sighting of Mawar, Onesimus and I head out from Kabola Bay in a jukung, a traditional outrigger canoe. But Onesimus warns: “He doesn’t always show up.”

The ocean’s balmy ripple is streaked with brilliant blue hues. Like a headman, Onesimus sits at the narrow bow, pointing to where he thinks Mawar will appear. We cut the engine’s chug in a clear turquoise patch. He first calls Mawar softly by name, then by impersonating a dugong’s chirp, like a bird. If he emerges, we’re told to stay in the boat, and not to feed or touch him.

Everything is as it should be. I’m snorkeling in one of the world’s most abundant underwater gardens and I think of Onesimus. I think about how he left a world of violence, and turned his life, and other lives, around by helping to create a healthy ecosystem for future generations.

But Mawar is being bashful. The boatman starts the engine up and we go round in dizzying circles until Onesimus points to a huge brown bulbous shape. Like a calf rubbing against its mother, Mawar rises, buffing his hefty mass against the boat’s stabilizing floats, popping his snout out, snorting.

Dugongs have poor eyesight, but Mawar seems to answer Onesimus’s calls by continually rising to the surface. Mawar swims back and forth, flicking his dolphin-like tail as he duck-dives under the boat. Dugongs can hold their breath up to six minutes and at three meters long, weighing over 660 pounds (300 kilograms), Mawar’s elegant movements belie his bulk.

As we sail back, Onesimus points to the dense mangrove forests that hem the shoreline. He tells me he now earns money from visitors who come from all over the world to meet Mawar—and these earnings have helped put his daughters through university in Jakarta.

Full of pride, he tells me his daughters, now in their 30s, both work as doctors in an inner-city hospital in the capital. It feels like Onesimus has come full-circle, his disheveled past meeting a more positive future.

The income Onesimus receives also reaches the local community: He gives money to fishermen for their children’s education, visits schools to teach students how to care for the environment, and holds regular beach clean-ups to protect the coast. One of Onesimus’s biggest achievements is starting the Kabola Fishermen Communication Forum. This initiative helps to support sustainable methods of fishing, preserve coral reefs and protect the region’s biodiversity. Krill have returned, attracting whale sharks, and more dugongs have been spotted as they’re increasingly less likely to be hunted for their tears and meat.

In 2015, the government established Pantar Strait Marine Reserve Area in Alor as a result of the work carried out by Onesimus, his forum, and the local community, along with WWF-Indonesia, the Alor Water Police, Alor’s Navy, local fisheries and the Ministry of Maritime Affairs. It covers some 277,000 hectares and is touted as one of Indonesia’s most beautiful marine parks.

That afternoon, I don a snorkel and fins and slip into the inviting waters of Alor Archipelago. A confetti of tropical fish rain around me; Moorish idols dart through healthy coral, and clown fish watch from the safety of their anemone homes. I spot a cuttlefish morphing from white to bread-brown to maroon-robe red, camouflaging itself while suctioning food from the ocean floor. Sea sponges, tunicates, and vibrant Christmas Tree plants decorate the coral.

Everything is as it should be. I’m snorkeling in one of the world’s most abundant underwater gardens and I think of Onesimus. I think about how he left a world of violence, and turned his life, and other lives, around by helping to create a healthy ecosystem for future generations.

It seems the claim on his T-shirt holds true: Alor’s local hero does indeed have an ‘outstanding heart’.

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The writer was a guest of SeaTrek Sailing Adventures on the voyage: East of Komodo—The Pacific Ring of Fire.
To meet Mawar, the dugong, contact Onesimus Laa in Indonesia on WhatsApp: +62 812-3697-8212

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