Gail Alexan­der

The coastal "lock­down" and the cur­few mean a raw deal for Care­nage fish­er­men-and ul­ti­mate­ly con­sumers-and none of it will taste even re­mote­ly as good as sushi. In fact, fish may be in short sup­ply to even make the pop­u­lar Japan­ese raw fish del­i­ca­cy, much less fish broth. That's the word from Care­nage fish­er­men who are floun­der­ing in the ef­fects of the state of emer­gency (SoE) and cur­few, much as they say the fish­ing-eat­ing pub­lic will be. Fish­er­men in the "hot spot" con­stituen­cy of PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley had al­ready been frus­trat­ed by the slow com­ple­tion of the Care­nage fish­ing com­plex and what they de­scribe as in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties.

They were al­so among the first fish­er­men hard hit when the SoE's ini­tial 9 pm to 5 am cur­few in main­ly north­ern ar­eas and San Fer­nan­do curbed their night fish­ing sched­ules. "...But now, is worse body blows," says Maxwell "Han­iff" La For­est. Yes­ter­day's (Sun­day morn­ing) sun­shine was bright on the Care­nage wa­ter. Boats were bob­bing at an­chor be­hind the com­plex. East­wards down the road at the well-known road­side Care­nage stall, ven­dors were cut­ting up and sell­ing a re­cent catch for a cou­ple of cus­tomers. More scenes like that, how­ev­er, are not guar­an­teed at the fish prices al­ready re­sult­ing from the SoE/cur­few.

At Care­nage's fish­ing com­plex, La For­est says:

"De­spite the re­laxed cur­few, the new coastal cur­few means you cut­ting fish­ing time by more than half, cut­ting the catch by the same thing and in­creas­ing our pro­duc­tion costs same way...So nat­u­ral­ly, fish prices gone up and go­ing up al­most 150 per cent." Reg­is, bare­backed like the rest of the men at the com­plex, reel off the new prices of fish:

• King­fish-$28 a pound.

• Red­fish-$20 a pound.

• Blue­fish-$20 a pound.

"....Cro Cro sup­posed to be the cheap­est fish it was $5 a pound...Is now $16 a pound!" de­clares Reg­is.

At 31, La For­est has been fish­ing all his life and has two kids and one on the way. "Nor­mal­ly we go out (to sea) at 9 pm and catch bait, then start fish­ing lat­er at night...We can't do that now if it have a 11 pm to 4 am cur­few ex­tend­ing three miles out to sea," he says. "So we have to spend more time out­side to catch fish but time we don't have be­cause of cur­few. "We can't even say we go­ing out fur­ther than the coastal cur­few area and stay­ing out all night to fish til the cur­few lift, be­cause the Coast Guard ha­rass­ing us."

Evo John, who wears a large gold chain adds: "On Sat­ur­day, a youth tie up a boat, fish­ing right off the pier here (be­hind the com­plex) and Coast Guard run him...They come with masks on their face." Lester, point­ing to the right, adds: "Coast Guard stop me from even us­ing a fish pot (trap) off there-where they ex­pect us to fish?" La For­est adds: "They pres­sure us say­ing we can't catch cer­tain species-king­fish, carite-but we're in the wa­ter every day. We know when some stocks down. We move ac­cord­ing to that. "We on­ly net some fish when it plen­ti­ful, like breed­ing sea­son and we don't over­fish that ei­ther-we ent stu­pid to fish out every­thing," he says.

"We know we have to catch and leave some to have more for lat­er months." Reg­is adds: "As it is too, no­body wait­ing round to try and get best price. "When a man come in tired from the North Coast be­cause he have to work dou­bly hard to make a catch in this sit­u­a­tion, he just sell it to the near­est ven­dor for what­ev­er price...we los­ing all round," he says. Liv­ing on the wa­ter's edge, La For­est and oth­er fish­er­men are in­creas­ing­ly bit­ter about what they see as un­fair tar­get­ing not on­ly on po­lit­i­cal-PNM- pro­fil­ing but racial and class ba­sis as well. If the po­lice ap­pear to be on­ly net­ting "fry dry" from SoE op­er­a­tions, Care­nage fish­er­men be­lieve they should look to high­er ground for "re­al big fish" and should have been do­ing it a long time ago.

La For­est says: "On­ly poor peo­ple get­ting hit in this. Gov­ern­ment isn't study­ing the reper­cus­sions of this (SoE)! The rich have mon­ey to cush­ion the ef­fect on them. Gov­ern­ment nev­er stop peo­ple from leav­ing the air­port, you think any drug lord still in T&T af­ter Au­gust 21? "Poor peo­ple feel­ing every inch of hard road of this (SoE) and still be­ing in­no­cent vic­tims from this, even if they not get­ting rob or kill. "When you squeeze fish­ing vil­lages where peo­ple have lim­it­ed skill be­yond fish­ing, it en­cour­ages il­le­gal things-slav­ery nev­er fin­ish and will nev­er fin­ish and crime will nev­er stop," de­clares La For­est. Along the con­crete pier be­hind the com­plex there are no lights or rails on the struc­ture which is still in a rough stage.

Throw­ing fish­ing lines are two East In­di­an guys, Roshard, a car parts em­ploy­ee of San Juan and his friend from Mass­a­chu­setts. His friend who said he came to T&T to set up busi­ness, says he's changed his mind. Fix­ing his cap, he says: "The Gov­ern­ment us­es too dras­tic mea­sures. My girl­friend from Ghana, watch­es T&T's In­ter­net pages dai­ly and she says there'll be eth­nic cleans­ing here. Roshard who says he's a PP sup­port­er says: "Gov­ern­ment needs to tread cau­tious­ly be­cause a race sit­u­a­tion could re­sult...I was in a car last week with an In­di­an girl in front seat. The Ne­gro la­dy be­hind was re­al­ly quar­relling about 'In­di­an do­ing this and PP dat..'

"She knew there were In­di­an peo­ple in the car and she didn't care, she was so up­set and frus­trat­ed...That kind of thing could boil up lat­er." Roshard adds: "It's sen­si­tive. The Mus­lims had to do Eid prayers with an 9 pm to 5 am cur­few, but Hin­dus have a lighter 9 pm to 4 am cur­few. You see po­lice on cam­era cussing a TV6 re­porter last week, much less for what he might be do­ing when TV cam­eras not on. "And you can't re­al­ly say the SoE cut crime out be­cause things still hap­pen­ing. They need to watch it." By then it's 10.30 am but the duo is not catch­ing much. "The fish an' all here on cur­few," laughs Roshard.