SEDARI, Indonesia — Fish and crustaceans usually run strong in the Java Sea, but the men of Sedari village, on the northern coast of the Indonesian island of Java, have no plans to go out on its waters.

Weeks after an unexpected gush of crude oil from an offshore well sent an inky stain across 12 miles of shoreline that is home to a dozen villages, Sedari’s fishermen are still grounded by the huge spill.

Nurji, 25, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, was born in Sedari and began working the seas as a teenager. These days, rather than fishing, he spends his days ferrying bags of polluted sand from the devastated beach.

“There’s no point going out there,” he said of the polluted waters. “There are no fish to catch.”

In a country prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, Indonesia is now contending with a man-made environmental disaster the scope of which is still unknown. And in a country rich in both natural resources and corruption, the slow, piecemeal and opaque response to the spill by the state-owned energy behemoth Pertamina has only exacerbated the effects of the initial leak that sprouted in mid-July.