Old Harbour vendors crucified as pre-Easter fish sales dry up

Easter is mere weeks away, but the traditional fetish for fish is not taking the bait.

Fisherfolk at the Old Harbour Bay fishing village in St Catherine have resorted to supplying fish on credit, banking on the trustworthiness of consumers as sales fall amid the slowdown wrought by COVID-19.

Fish vendor Lavine Henry said that the phenomenon was historic.

The slump is so bad, vendors have resorted to even removing the scales and gut for free – a sweetener for which the traders’ assistants would normally charge. The upshot: handy helpers who would normally depend on those earnings have lost that hustle as sellers have been forced to absorb that task.

‘Scrapers’ would usually charge $60 per pound.

“Right now, from dem a talk bout this disease, nothing nah gwan. We haffi a call in some people, and we a trust. We can’t tek in no more fish.”

“... We only a beg di people dem weh trust fi carry in the money. A first in a history we a do this. Never before we a bag out and trust,” Henry said.

Henry, though, believes that it is better to offer the fish on credit than to dispose of them amid sluggish demand. Prices range from $250 per pound for herring sprat; $400, doctor fish; and $650, parrot fish.

With vendors already being crucified, Henry said that this Easter would be different.

“A first in a history, but we only a say thank God we nuh dash dem weh ... . Di people dem say dem a stock up that if corona get worse, dem have salt things,” she told The Gleaner.

‘Corona’ is the the novel coronavirus – an infection that causes respiratory complications and has killed more than 23,000 people globally and infected more than half a million.

Jobs Losses

Henry, who works alongside her sister, usually hires four other persons to help in the selling and cleaning of fish. The loss of those four jobs, when scaled up, is emblematic of the haemorrhage that the viral outbreak has unleashed on the global economy, which could shed up to 25 million jobs, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Similar despair was echoed by other fisherfolk who lamented the inability to increase prices at a time when demand is usually high.

“Inna February, more people were in the market than now when it is time for us to make money. We sit down, wait, and bawl fi Easter ‘cause a di best time for fish selling, and right now, the sickness come out, we head gone ‘cause right now we a go lose,” Jamoy Small, a younger vendor, told The Gleaner.

Another fishmonger, Paulette Coley, said that public awareness was high among some vendors who sought to adopt the social-distancing protocols of three feet apart to limit the possibility of spread. But she had lingering concerns for others.

“If you look around in the arcade now, majority of them not adhering to the rule because what they making sure is that they catch a sale,” Coley said as she sat in her car trunk awaiting sales.

Owen Blake, a fisherman for close to 50 years and public relations officer for the Old Harbour Bay fisherfolk organisation, said that vendors have been conforming to the Government’s measures.

He said that the village is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily in observance of the market strictures, which came into effect last week.

andre.williams@gleanerjm.com