Some people hope for the farmers could keep preserving and raising seaweeds cultivation with spinosum type in Nusa Penida Island beach area of Klungkung Regency Bali.

Klungkung Regent, Wayan Candra, on Tuesday mentioned that spinosum seaweed is part of rare aquatic plant species that in Indonesia could only growth in the area of Nusa Penida Beach.

Nusa Penida, a small island located around ten mile to the south east part of Bali has beach area known as spinosum museum, that is a rare seaweed species in the world.

“Preserve it and keep cultivate it which already has economic value nowadays,” he said.

According to the local farmers, number of researcher from IPB Bogor or from faculty of agricultural Udayana University and as far as from foreign university, they usually mentioned that spinosum is a rare species.

Those researchers also confessed that they feels grateful for kind of rare plant could flourish at Nusa Penida beach area as an area that is people or tourists hardly ever visit.

Different with lots of areas in the Island of God, Bali, that is sell for tourism and almost none of them could be planted with seaweeds.

I Putu Balon (36), seaweed farmer who also the owner of boat rental business said that according to the information given by those researchers, Nusa Penida beach area is the place where spinosum and katoni seaweed lived.

“At first, when the farmer did not know its value and that it was rare, no one ever touch that spinosum,” he said.

But today, continued Balon, most of the farmer start to put their concern toward this plant and cultivated it, moreover with a better price compared with katoni type.

Officers in Klungkung Agricultural Agency mentioned that few years ago seaweeds farmer at Nusa Penida make katoni as their belle since it has good enough price on market moreover katoni habitat is quite a lot around Nusa Penida waters. However, lately katoni got rival with the same type from South East Sulawesi caused Nusa Penida katoni went through price drop in Surabaya market.

It is said that that in relation with gradually price drop by the competitor from other regencies make the farmer start to divert their attention to cultivating spinosum, the rare seaweed plant.

“Luckily, farmer shipment to the same place recently could received with good price,” he said.

Due to that good price most of the seaweed farmer in Nusa Penida start to cultivating spinosum, that in Indonesia only live at Nusa Penida waters.

News by Antara Bali