It’s an Easter blessing come early for fisherfolk of the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex.
The market on Princess Alice Highway was abuzz with activity yesterday as fishermen returned with large quantities of flying fish, which vendors said were sold at $80 per hundred; while a pack of ten ready-boned flying fish cost $15.
“It was quiet for a little while, but now you have a whole set of boats coming in with flying fish. They were out for four or five days and came back with a full load,” one happy vendor said as she waited to get her share of the catch.
“Last week, it was really, really dead. We didn’t have anything; boats coming, so things picked up this week,” she added with a smile.
When a DAILY NATION team got dockside, fisherman could be seen breaking flying fish out of ice, lifting off dolphins and hoisting tuna from their boats to the eagerly waiting vendors quayside.
“Look at this one here!” fisherman Cedric “Cow” Hunte said as he pulled out yellowfin tuna from his ice boat.
“The fish flying again!” Michael “Trumpet” Brewster said as he held up a flying fish.
The feeling of glee was also apparent with other vendors who, while noting yesterday’s landing was a moderate catch, said it was much better than those in recent weeks.
“I’m so happy that they came back. We wish they could come down a little more often, though,” vendor Sandra Hinds jokingly said.
One fisherman sitting on dockside said the day’s catch was a good one as one boat had landed an estimated 30 000 pounds of flying fish alone.
While pleased with the catch, he noted the flying fish were not near Barbadian waters as they once were.
Instead, he said, fishermen now had to travel hundreds of miles south in order to get a catch that they would have gotten close to home decades ago. (AD)
