Lembata is an island in the
Lesser Sunda Islands, also known as Lomblen island; it is the largest island of the
Solor Archipelago, in the
Lesser Sunda Islands,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. It forms a separate
regency
A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
of the
province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...
of
Nusa Tenggara Timur
East Nusa Tenggara ( id, Nusa Tenggara Timur – NTT; pt, Sonda Oriental) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the ...
. The length of the island is about 80 km from the southwest to the northeast and the width is about 30 km from the west to the east. It rises to a height of 1,533 metres.
To the west lie the other islands in the archipelago, most notably
Solor and
Adonara
Adonara is an island in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, located east of the larger island of Flores in the Solor Archipelago. To the east lies Lembata, formerly known as Lomblen. Adonara is the highest of the islands of the archipelago, re ...
, and then the larger island of
Flores. To the east is the
Alor Strait, which separates this archipelago from the
Alor Archipelago. To the south across the
Savu Sea
The Savu Sea (or the Sawu Sea) ( id, Laut Sawu, pt, Mar de Savu, tet, Tasi Savu) is a small sea within Indonesia named for the island of Savu (Sawu) on its southern boundary. It is bounded by Savu and Rai Jua to the south, the islands of ...
lies the island of
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...
, while to the north the western branch of the
Banda Sea
The Banda Sea ( id, Laut Banda, pt, Mar de Banda, tet, Tasi Banda) is one of four seas that surround the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, connected to the Pacific Ocean, but surrounded by hundreds of islands, including Timor, as well as the Halma ...
separates it from
Buton
Buton (also Butung, Boeton or Button) is an island in Indonesia located off the southeast peninsula of Sulawesi. It covers roughly 4,727 square kilometers in area, or about the size of Madura; it is the 129th largest island in the world and ...
and the other islands of
Southeast Sulawesi
Southeast Sulawesi ( id, Sulawesi Tenggara) is a province on the island of Sulawesi, forming the southeastern peninsula of that island, together with a number of substantial offshore islands such as Buton, Muna, Kabaena and Wawonii (formerly ...
.
Administration
The
Lembata Regency
Lembata Regency is a regency in East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia. Established on 4 October 1999 (under administrative Law UU 52/1999) from part of East Flores Regency, the regency covers the island of Lembata (formerly known as Lomblen), to ...
includes the island of Lembata and three small offshore islands. It is sub-divided into nine
districts.
Geography
The capital city Lewoleba (also known as Labala) is found on the western part of the island next to a bay, across which lies Lewotolo
volcano
A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Ear ...
to the north. Ships frequently connect the coastal towns and surrounding islands, but the only bigger harbour exists at Lewoleba in the north of the island. From Lewoleba there are daily connections to
Larantuka, Flores, and Waiwerang on the neighbouring island of Adonara.
Like the other Lesser Sunda Islands, and indeed much of Indonesia, Lembata is volcanically active. It has three volcanoes,
Ililabalekan,
Iliwerung, and
Lewotolo
Mount Ile Lewotolok or Lewotolo ( id, Gunung Lewotolok) is a stratovolcano in the north-central part of the island of Lembata in the Province of East Nusa Tenggara in Indonesia.
2020 eruptions
On 27 November, an eruption occurred at 5:57 a.m ...
.
History
The south part of Lembata was the site of the state of Labala.
People
The people of Lembata are, like many other inhabitants of Eastern Indonesia, famous for their handmade
ikat
''Ikat'' (in Indonesian languages means "bind") is a dyeing technique originating from Indonesia used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric.
In ''ikat'', the resist is formed by b ...
weavings.
The national language,
Indonesian, is known by many people of all ages, but like on other islands the national language coexists with many local languages. The most widespread and most widely understood of these is probably
Lamaholot (another
lingua franca inside the
Solor archipelago). Lamaholot is spoken as a native language on Eastern
Flores and Western
Solor, and is itself divided into ten or more sublanguages (and many more dialects). It is spoken by 150.000 or more people in the region. Some of those sublanguages are indeed very distinct from Lamaholot, i.e. the Atadei language of
Atadei District (
Kecamatan Atadei), which again is subclassified as Eastern and Western Atadei, the former being spoken in
Atalojo for example, the latter in
Kalikasa. A very distinct language spoken in the eastern part of the island is
Kedang.
On the south coast of Lembata, the village of Lamalera (pop. 2,500) is known for its
hunting of sperm whale and other deep-sea species. The hunting has been taking place for at least six centuries, and is allowed under
International Whaling Commission
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a specialised regional fishery management organisation, established under the terms of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to "provide for the proper conservation ...
regulations concerning
aboriginal whaling
Indigenous whaling is the hunting of whales by indigenous peoples recognised by either IWC (International Whaling Commission) or the hunting is considered as part of indigenous activity by the country. It is permitted under international reg ...
. However,
conservationists worry that commercial whaling also takes place, and that hunters use their engine-powered boats all year round to catch other protected species such as manta rays,
orca
The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only extant species in the genus '' Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black-and-white ...
s (''Orcinus orca''), dolphins and oceanic sharks.
Lamalera and
Lamakera (on the neighbouring island of Solor) are the last two remaining Indonesian whaling communities.
Environment
In 2011, the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) found two rare coral reef fish in the sea of Lamalera, they were
Yellow-fin fairy wrasse (''Cirrhilabrus flavidorsalis'') and
Swallowtail hawkfish (''Cyprinocirrhites polyactis''), which only exist in waters surrounding Indonesia and the Philippines.
The two species were the first to be found in Lamalera Sea, but similar types have been found near
Bali before. The fish were only found in seas with good coral reefs, although traces of bombing had been found around the coral reefs in the Lamalera Sea, but it was not serious yet.
In February 2016, a new species of flasher wrasse, Paracheilinus Alfiani, was described from a holotype collected from the reef around Lembata.
[Adams, Jake. ]
References
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20060319135707/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_8_110/ai_79051531
{{Authority control
Solor Archipelago
id:Kabupaten Lembata
jv:Kabupatèn Lembata
ms:Kabupaten Lembata