The heavy showers Jamaica encountered on August 17 prevented the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) from conducting an investigation into a report of juvenile fish, lobsters, crabs, sea cucumbers and other marine species washing up on the Hellshire Fishing Beach in St Catherine.
When The Gleaner team arrived at the location, anxious fisherfolk pointed to sections of the beach where the juvenile fish were dead or dying, and crabs and lobsters crawling out of the sea to die on the shore. Concerned about the threat to their livelihood but confused as to what was causing the fish kill, some of the fishers sought help in getting answers.
"Something in the water killing off everything, and the water stink! We need NEPA to come here and investigate," declared one fisherman. However, that did not happen as the island was already experiencing heavy rains associated with Tropical Storm Grace and the agency did not think it prudent to send out its staff.
Instead, it contacted a sister agency which was closer to the beach and whose staff is equally competent in the marine sciences. However, this option did not pan out as by then, weather conditions had deteriorated and the island was under a hurricane watch.
Manager of Public Education and Corporate Communication, Ollyvia Anderson, told The Gleaner on Friday that given the intensity of the rainfall, the evidence would in all likelihood have been washed out to sea by now.
However, the fisherfolk were concerned that something in the water was in fact hurting the marine creatures, forcing them to flee to shore. They cited the number of juvenile lobsters, as well as crabs which had crawled out of the water to die, and the number of dead sea cucumbers which had floated to the surface.
They mentioned, also, a mature octopus that was found near to shore, which was easily captured by hand, as it was in an obviously weakened state.
The fisherfolk described as puzzling, the behaviour of welks, a sea mollusc which was seen in great numbers on the rocks. They declared that welks usually come out at night and not during the day, as was happening. They say this is clear evidence that something in the water is hurting the marine creatures and changing their behaviour.
My guess is that the heavy rains caused a runoff of poisons on land which went into the sea--farming chemicals, remnants of paving projects, backed-up sewers, all of it hitting the sea at once. A few tide-changes might help the situation if that is what the problem is. However it might also be that some sneaky ship captain blew out his chemical and/or acid tanks into the bay at night or possibly heaved overboard some dangerous solid material which is now perkolating just off the beach.
Chester Goode Growing up here, there would be (and still is) tar on the beach (it's better now than then) which would stain your feet. I believe it came from crude bunker oil tank blowouts, but I don't know. They were usually no bigger than 1-2" in diameter, etc.
When I lived in Huntington Beach CA in the early 80's, I came across the tarball from hell. It was super fogged out and as I walked back down the beach to get to where I'd started (it was a bad drift) there, lurking out of the fog on the beach was a freshly planted boulder that looked like a water rounded pebble. Like a seabean, but a little bit bigger. It was about 8 ft. in diameter and about 4.5 feet high!
I instantly wondered, 'If I can get that to a refinery, how much would they pay me.?" Alas, I walked around it and kept walking.
R.C.