News Item "Petik Laut, offerings for a bigger haul"

http://www.nihdia.com

Sendangbiru is a fishing village in Tambakrejo in Sumbermanjing, East Java, about 70 kilometers away from Malang, the nearest big city.
Apart from the charms of the southern sea, Sendangbiru has an annual event called petik laut, when residents have a four-day beach party, featuring music performances, a dusk-to-dawn shadow puppet show and, to cap things off, the floating of offerings into the sea in a ritual called the labuh semboyo. 

“The activity has been held since 1983,” said Sumaji, chairman of the organizing committee for this year’s event. The ritual is performed to express thanks to God for abundant fish catches and to pray for safety on the water in the year ahead. During the petik laut, fishermen show respect for the sea, halting work temporarily to allow for the restoration of polluted waters and marine resources, which have been cleanly managed to date. 
      

For the petik laut, ritual offerings were prepared in the house of Haji Atmo Usmail, a local elder. The preparations crossed ethnic boundaries, as those from Javanese families with a long history in Sendangbiru mixed with more recent arrivals from Bali, Madura and Makassar to decorate a giant tumpeng rice cone and a small gitik sesajen boat.



taken from : the jakarta post