We have been in Antigua for a week now, having sailed up from Deshaies on 14th.  Time to clean up the boat a bit and catch up on some of the odd jobs that always seem to need doing.  Yesterday saw Chris leave and Jane arrive.  Tomorrow Ralph and Lucy will join us and they can all enjoy a taste of the Caribbean life.  It isn’t all pleasure; it just seems to be!

 

Having spent time in Falmouth Harbour initially, we came up to Jolly Harbour as an easier point for crew joining or leaving.  Jolly Harbour has a well stocked supermarket (particularly for anglophile visitors) and showers for anyone in the marina.  Generally, quite a congenial atmosphere thanks in part to the Crows Nest bar and restaurant which provides a pleasant place to meet and relax in the evenings.  Less hustle and bustle than Falmouth Harbour, but more a sense of community.

 

We were surprised by the amount of fish life in the marina.  It appears increasingly clear that the protected environments of the marinas in the Caribbean allows an abundance of life locally which simply can no longer persist outside among the fish traps, nets, and line fishermen.  Where else locally can one see a large barracuda lying in wait for its prey, a dolphin chasing fish so vigorously at night that either it or its prey made violent collisions with Tucanon’s hull (making me leap from my bed fearing a more serious collision!), or shoals of mullet leap from the water as a large predator pursued them.  Tarpon also hunt these waters at dusk, sometimes breaking surface in pursuit of their prey.  And the Moray Eel we saw vigorously hunting shore crabs at night in the Marina de Riviere Sens was extraordinary.

 

I had the privilege of spending time talking to an elderly local man who was born in Portsmouth, Dominica, and has sailed the Atlantic.  Two men from Portsmouth; one in England and one in Dominica.  He knew Peter (now dead) of the Peter’s Sport Cafe in Horta, the Azores, (an informal “post office” where whalers used to leave and collect mail in the days when it could take months for a letter to reach its destination) and has witnessed whale being caught on neighbouring Pico in traditional oar propelled boats.  He was a fund of information about the Caribbean region.  He has the same view that I have come to – fish life is being eradicated by over-fishing.  How else does one explain a visit to the fish market in the Saintes and finding just one fish for sale?  How else does one explain trolling a lure for four weeks in the northern Caribbean and catching only one fish?  The same activity between the Caribbean, Bermuda and the Azores had us stopping fishing because our freezer was full. When the Grand Banks off Newfoundland were closed to fishing in 1977, it marked the end of the greatest cod fishery the world has known.  The cod population has still not recovered to a level that would justify re-opening the fishery.

 

The dilemma is who will deny people the right to eat fish? And what will be the substitute? The world’s population has trebled in my lifetime, and grown even faster in the Caribbean, so there are many more mouths to feed and people have made increasing demands on local food resources.  Grouper were once known as large fish which might weigh 100lbs.  Today, the grouper on a Caribbean restaurant plate is commonly the small fillet of a fish which had not even reached breeding age before being caught.  This is not something that can be left to market forces, because market forces will always make it worthwhile to catch the last fish in the sea.