ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Fishing Stakes of Science: Singapore’s Kelongs in the Late-20th Century

• In Event: Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds 3

English Abstract

Kelong, a large and stationary offshore fishing stake structure, used to be prominent features of Singapore’s fisheries industry. In the 1940s, the 254 licensed kelongs in Singapore produced 60% of its inshore catch. These numbers faced a sharp decline in the late-20th century as the newly independent nation-state moved towards other forms of economic production, and there are only three operating kelongs left in local waters today. How might we think about the legacies of these traditional fishing stakes? In the decades that kelongs faded into industrial obsolescence, they also took on shifts in meaning to become crucial sites of zoological research in a time when local academic science was on the rise. This paper tells this story by focusing on late-20th century fish specimens from kelongs that are held as part of the Zoological Reference Collection (ZRC) housed at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore today. These specimens and their labels are a rich archive of information: kelong names and locations, names of scientific collaborators, and in some cases, even collecting methods. They reveal ways that kelongs have been entangled with networks of scientists and their institutions—such as Eric R. Alfred of the Raffles Library and Museum, and Tham Ah Kow from the Fisheries Biology Unit at the University of Singapore. Bringing fish specimens into conversation with diverse sources including oral histories and scientific reports, this paper centers the role of kelongs and their operators in the shaping of local science in Singapore.

Author

• Kathy Poh, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum