Lembata is an island in the

Lesser Sunda Islands The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands ( id, Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up t ...

, also known as Lomblen island; it is the largest island of the Solor Archipelago, in the

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 sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

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 Solor is a volcanic island located off the eastern tip of Flores island in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, in the Solor Archipelago. The island supports a small population that has been whaling for hundreds of years. They speak the lang ...

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 Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...

. 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 East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

, 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 I ...

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 ca ...

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 A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

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 of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

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 bi ...

weavings. The national language,

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** 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 A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

inside the Solor archipelago). Lamaholot is spoken as a native language on Eastern

and Western

, 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 of ...

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 regu ...

. However,

conservationists The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the f ...

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 taxon, extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black ...

s (''Orcinus orca''), dolphins and oceanic sharks. Lamalera and

Lamakera Lamakera in 1904. Lamakera is a village in Indonesia, on the east tip of Solor Island. It was known for being the place where the most manta rays are killed. It was featured in the 2015 documentary film, ''Racing Extinction''. The villagers also h ...

(on the neighbouring island of Solor) are the last two remaining Indonesian whaling communities.

Environment

In 2011, the

Indonesian Institute of Sciences The Indonesian Institute of Sciences ( id, Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia, or LIPI) was the governmental authority for science and research in Indonesia. It consists of 47 research centers in the fields ranging from social to natural scienc ...

(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 Bali () is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller neighbouring islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nu ...

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