The Wawata Topu are a group of women free-divers from Adara, a small fishing village on the west coast of Atauro Island, who dive fully clothed with hand-made wooden goggles to spear fish and gather shellfish. Their name, from the local language of Atauro, means “women divers”, and outside Timor-Leste they are often called the “mermaids of Timor-Leste”.
This post accompanies episode 4 of Scubazoo’s 2018 series Timor-Leste from Below, which follows the Wawata Topu. (The dugong, the animal behind many mermaid legends, has its own episode: see dugongs in Dili.)
Watch: episode 4
Who are the Wawata Topu?
On Atauro, reef fishing from boats has traditionally been men’s work. The Wawata Topu are women, many without a boat of their own, who organised themselves as a group, taught each other to free-dive and fish together close to shore. They dive on a single breath with simple wooden spears, wearing goggles carved from wood and fitted with glass. It is small-scale, low-impact fishing: no nets, no engines and almost no bycatch.
Fishing and conservation in Adara
Like many fishing communities in the region, Adara has seen catches fall. In 2016 Adara became the first community on Atauro to use tara bandu, a Timorese customary law that sets community bans on using a resource, to create a “no-take” marine managed area. With support from Conservation International, twelve more were set up around the island in 2017–2018. Today 13 marine managed areas cover about 1,308 ha, 37% of it no-take, and visitors who swim, snorkel or dive inside them pay a small fee to the village. Read more in our tara bandu guide.
Visiting Adara
Adara is on Atauro’s quieter west coast and is also a base for snorkelling. Arrange transport and any community visit through your accommodation or the community tourism association ATKOMA, and ask before photographing people. Getting to the island is covered in our Atauro Island guide and Dili to Atauro ferry guide.