Indonesia has 580 million hectares (ha) of marine coastal waters. The area used to be good grounds of natural stocks of fish, cockle, mussel, oyster, and seaweeds that artisanal fishermen can enjoy exploiting it for their living. At present the resource is diminishing at a drastic rate as a result of heavy exploitation of fishing grounds. The declining resource affects on the livelihood of the small-scale fishing families and rural communities. The impact can cause serious socio-economic problems to the coastal communities which requires solutions.
One of the Fisheries Development Policies in line with the REPELITA IV is to increase fisheries production through commercial and non-commercial programme. The former is directed towards the increase in production through large scale operation whereas the latter is directed to the improvement of production of the low income group. Seafarming is one of the means by which the coastal water can be more efficiently exploited and offers considerable potential for the government to reach the development goal.
Within the framework of the National Seafarming Development Plan and to avoid conflicts with artisanal fisheries and other users of the coastal waters, about 0.01 per cent (580 000 ha) of the coastal waters should be reserved for the seafarming development purposes. At present about 84 725 ha are found suitable for seafarming development. Among of those are 3600 ha for finfish, 22 950 ha for cockle, 20 700 ha for mussel, 7 850 ha for oyster, 5 600 ha for pearl oyster, 23 000 ha for seaweed, and 2 500 for sea cucumber (Table 1) .
To realize its potential, this seafarming resource map is prepared with a view to provide information on areas suitable for culture of marine finfish in floating netcages, cockle culture on bottom, mussel culture on stakes, oyster culture on poles, pearl culture on basket, seaweed culture on off-bottom and raft, and sea cucumber in net enclosure. Pollutant sources that may impact on the development are also provided for the site assessment.
Potential areas shown this report were obtained from provincial officers, fishermen and available literatures. The sites were reconfirmed by actual sites visit during 1985–1988. Hydrographic chart, Topography map. Satellite images of the potential areas taking from MSS Landsat-5 were also used to facilitate the mapping.
