Malayan fishes
C.N. Maxwell, Director of Supplies for the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States, published this comprehensive handbook on Malayan fishes in 1921, prompted by the Profiteering Commission’s finding that no recorded information existed on local fish and fisheries. The work serves as both a practical identification guide—pairing scientific taxonomy with hundreds of Malay names—and a policy argument for the systematic development of Malaya’s fisheries through cold storage infrastructure, scientific research, and protection of freshwater habitats from mining silt.
Summary
Maxwell’s central argument is that Malaya possesses extraordinary fishery resources—spanning a thousand miles of coastline between the Indian Ocean and the China Sea, with an estimated 2,000 species of fish and at least 500 of economic importance—yet these resources are being squandered through ignorance, poor transport infrastructure, and environmental degradation. The preface and introductory chapters lay out the biological basis for fisheries management, explaining spawning migrations, the Leptocephalus larval stage, and the denatant drift of larvae toward coastal nurseries. Maxwell argues that the thousands of Chinese fish-traps (pompang, ambai, langgai) operating between Penang and Port Swettenham are intercepting these larvae during their drift, and that the “Bunga ayer” caught in such traps are almost certainly the larval forms of valuable food fish, a point he insists requires urgent scientific confirmation.
The bulk of the work is a family-by-family survey of Malayan fishes, each entry combining taxonomic identification, Malay nomenclature (often published for the first time), notes on edible quality, and observations on capture methods. Maxwell draws heavily on Australian ichthyological literature (Stead, Roughley) and Philippine fishery reports (Seale) to contextualise local species within broader regional patterns. He identifies numerous species that are commercially underutilised—deep-water species accessible only by trawling, for instance, or the Tenggiri (Spanish Mackerel) which he considers the finest fish in Malayan waters—and argues that the absence of cold storage means that hundreds of tons of prime fish caught on the East coast are dried for export rather than consumed fresh.
A distinctive and urgent thread runs through the work: the destruction of freshwater fisheries by tin-mining silt. Maxwell recalls the West coast rivers as “fine clear streams” now reduced to “thick turbid streams carrying a heavy burden of slime and silt,” and traces the causal chain from silt pollution through to the simultaneous destruction of rice cultivation, arguing that “where you can grow rice you can catch fish and where you can no longer catch fish you cannot grow rice.” The decline of the Terubok (Shad) fishery, which he attributes to silt-choked rivers preventing spawning ascents, is presented as a case study in irreversible loss.
Key Findings
- The Profiteering Commission of 1920 found itself “impressed and much handicapped by the absence of any recorded information relating to fish and fisheries,” prompting government-approved recommendations for control and organisation of the fishing industry (p. 179).
- An estimated 2,000 species of fish inhabit Malayan waters, of which not less than 500 are of economic importance and approximately 250 are valuable marine food fishes (p. 184).
- Fish costing $15 a pikul at sea cost $80 a pikul in Kuala Lumpur, 30 miles away, due to the absence of cold storage and the inefficiency of ice-based transport (p. 187).
- A saw-fish measuring 23 feet 6 inches (exclusive of the saw) was taken in the Bay of Bengal by the Government trawler “Golden Crown,” believed to be the largest recorded fish; the largest saw in the Raffles Museum, Singapore, measures 5 ft. 10¾ in. (p. 228).
- The Keretang (Epinephelus pantherinus) commonly reaches two to three hundred pounds in weight; Maxwell and a Malay companion landed a specimen estimated at 6 piculs (approximately 800 pounds), requiring them to sink their boat to load it (p. 208).
- The Terubok (Shad) fishery has declined in both quantity and quality within Maxwell’s lifetime; fish now taken are “mostly spent fish in which state they are positively unwholesome,” and he has observed them “choked by silt in their attempt to ascend the rivers” (p. 186).
Conclusion
Maxwell’s definitive takeaway is that Malaya’s fisheries represent an enormous but unrealised economic asset, and that their development depends not on any single intervention but on the combined application of scientific research, state-organised cold storage infrastructure on the East coast islands, protection of freshwater habitats from mining pollution, and the systematic collection of indigenous fishing knowledge. He frames the issue in terms of national economic stability, asserting that “the economic stability of every country depends on the price of the peoples’ food” and that an enlightened policy of exploitation and regulation will render fisheries “one of the great economic assets of Malaya” (p. 189).
Context
- Maxwell was not an ichthyologist but a colonial supply officer writing from an administrative perspective; he explicitly acknowledges that “the ichthyologists are not linguists and the linguists are not ichthyologists” and positions his work as a temporary bridge until specialist fishery bulletins can be produced (p. 179).
- The work draws on the F.M.S. Museums and Raffles Museum, Singapore collections, and relies heavily on secondary literature from Australia (Stead, Roughley), the Philippines (Seale), and India (Day, Cantor), reflecting the limited state of local ichthyological research at the time.