Pao­lo Ker­na­han

There is a leg­end which sug­gests that once you eat cas­cadoux you will stay in Trinidad for the rest of your days. I've eat­en it an...meh. There are strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween eat­ing cas­cadoux and my ca­reer in the me­dia; it's a hell of a lot of work for very lit­tle re­ward (du­ty to coun­try is its own re­ward ent?).

The oth­er name for this cu­ri­ous del­i­ca­cy is "cas­cadu­ra." It is an odd­ball mem­ber of the cat­fish fam­i­ly and its ar­mour plat­ing would present a chal­lenge to any preda­tor (with the ex­cep­tion of hu­mans armed with a cast­ing net and cur­ry pow­der).Peo­ple gush about eat­ing cas­cadu­ra as if it were a spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Try­ing to clean that fish is like grap­pling with a ra­zor-em­bed­ded bar of soap. It could just be that as a town folk I don't have the coun­try know-how on the prepa­ra­tion of this Swiss-army fish.

Re­cent­ly the cas­cadu­ra shot in­to the spot­light (well it was spot­ted on the out­er edges of the spot­light) as the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj float­ed the idea of re­stock­ing cas­cadu­ra and riv­er conch–an­oth­er del­i­ca­cy for many Tri­nis.The fact that this is be­ing con­sid­ered sug­gests that pop­u­la­tions of both species are in de­cline.

It is not a new con­cern and sev­er­al the­o­ries as to pos­si­ble caus­es have been of­fered. In my opin­ion the con­cept of re­stock­ing in this in­stance seems like plant­i­ng for­est trees for squat­ters to burn.There ought to be a full un­der­stand­ing of the in­tri­cate na­ture of the prob­lem be­fore the pro­mul­ga­tion of such a strat­e­gy. At any rate, we should not be ex­port­ing the grim div­i­dends of our ap­palling eco­log­i­cal mis­man­age­ment to oth­er coun­tries.

Guyana could be a pos­si­ble source of im­ports of cas­cadu­ra: our neigh­bour to the south is 50 times the size of Trinidad. But they too face prob­lems with over­fish­ing. We may very well be con­tribut­ing to their dilem­ma by cre­at­ing an ad­di­tion­al mar­ket for this much sought-af­ter fish. One area known for cas­cadu­ra and conch is Ker­na­ham vil­lage, a com­mu­ni­ty built up in an area along the west coast of Trinidad which was once dense swamp for­est.

Opin­ion in the com­mu­ni­ty about the cas­cadu­ra-and-conch co­nun­drum tends to vary. It has been sug­gest­ed by some vil­lagers that over­fish­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the spawn­ing pe­ri­od of the cas­cadu­ra, in no small mea­sure con­tributes to di­min­ished stocks.Ker­na­ham is al­most like a float­ing vil­lage; sol­id land was cre­at­ed in many places by ex­ca­vat­ing the swamp and com­pact­ing the fill ma­te­r­i­al to cre­ate the sub­strate for home­steads.

There is al­so a com­plex sys­tem of chan­nels laid down al­most like a grid through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. These chan­nels re­tain a con­nec­tion with the sprawl­ing Nar­i­va swamp.With an ever-present de­mand for cas­cadu­ra, the fish are gath­ered ei­ther with nets or bam­boo traps placed strate­gi­cal­ly at ma­jor in­ter­sec­tions used by the fish.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this is a re­source open to out­siders who may not ap­pre­ci­ate the com­plex na­ture of the cas­cadu­ra fish­ery in the vil­lage. Many a week­end war­rior can be seen try­ing his hand at they cast nets all along the murky chan­nels.The sto­ry is much the same with the riv­er conch, a large fresh­wa­ter snail which re­quires about twice the amount of prepa­ra­tion that the cas­cadu­ra does. I've been told that the riv­er conch is now hard­er to find in the vil­lage chan­nels.

If you are a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor to Ma­yaro, you may have no­ticed that vend­ing stalls at the side of the coastal road typ­i­cal­ly stacked with the large pur­plish/black orbs are a bit more bare than usu­al.If conch hunters are to main­tain the sup­ply, it would mean ven­tur­ing deep in the more fore­bod­ing ar­eas of the Nar­i­va Swamp, a risky prospect giv­en the wide avail­abil­i­ty of less de­sir­able game such as poi­so­nous snakes, scor­pi­ons and oth­er shiv­er-in­duc­ing crit­ters.

One im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion could be a rigid­ly en­forced ban on the hunt­ing of cas­cadu­ra and conch dur­ing cer­tain times of the year. The breed­ing and spawn­ing pe­ri­od for the cas­cadu­ra runs about three months.Lock that down and the species will cer­tain­ly have a fight­ing chance at re­plen­ish­ing their num­bers; the same could be said of the conch.

In­ci­den­tal­ly, the blue and hairy crabs are fac­ing the very same threat. They al­so breed dur­ing a very spe­cif­ic win­dow in the cal­en­dar year. In fact, this is when they are most pres­sured by hunt­ing.Dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son these crabs will run; in oth­er words they can be seen swarm­ing along drainage chan­nels hug­ging the main road­way which skirts the Nar­i­va Swamp.

As the crabs run, the hu­mans run, fill­ing up their bags with as many as they can car­ry. That haul of­ten in­cludes fe­males which haven't had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­posit their eggs in the wa­ter. So be­fore we get to the stage of re­stock­ing, we can be­gin with the far less com­pli­cat­ed strat­e­gy of an en­forced close sea­son for these species.Re­stock­ing with­out pro­tec­tion of the lo­cal species...you may as well sim­ply de­liv­er the fish di­rect­ly to the fish­er­men for dis­tri­b­u­tion.