MUHAMMAD Ilyas still remembers well how easy it was to collect clams, catch crabs or find flower-like jellyfish on the shore as a child. Now these creatures have become hard to come by. "There were even turtles on the beach when we were playing," said Ilyas, head of the Kemujan village, Central Java.

Ilyas blames damages to Karimunjawa's coastal ecosystem for these marine creatures' scarcity. Furthermore, fishermen now have to go far out to sea if t