Slim pickings, lack of ice at City fish market

Fisherfolk at the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex complained Monday that a blue Christmas awaits them due to abnormally slow sales, shrinking catches and a broken ice-maker.

Vendors told Barbados TODAY that the situation is so dire that they consider business in December to be the worst it has been in many years, leaving them to wonder what type of Christmas they will have.

Andy Small said the past three weeks have been a struggle for him and his colleagues at the market and they are concerned that the situation may not improve as the yuletide season draw nearer.

Small said: “This is the worse I have seen in a while. Check how the market is for the past three weeks, it dead and no money ain’t really making.

“It is just a few regulars coming that you find that buying fish. This is what we probably got to go through now until next year.

“For the past two months now the machine break down and we can’t get any ice, so it is an inconvenience.”

Longstanding vendor Patricia Mapp said business is so slow that she found herself sitting in the car park with nothing to do. Mapp lamented that over the past three weeks a decrease in sales has led to some vendors scrambling to pay debts to fishermen and boat owners.

Mapp told Barbados TODAY: “The ice machine did down from since sometime in November which is almost six weeks so we finding a struggle trying to get ice.

“Sometimes I buy like $300 a week in ice and in three weeks time that is $900 which is money out of your profits.

“I does have people to pay out of my profit and they think that you just want to take fish and ain’t pay for it.

“If the ice machine was working the boats would probably be up and working so Christmas is about a week away and you would still be able to buy ham and turkey for your family.”

Tyson Bourne said he holds the view that in addition to the out-of-commission ice making machine, limited flying fish in the market at this time, which he said is not customary, is also a major factor in “customers not coming”.

“Probably if the flying fish was coming regularly you would have had a lot of people still coming,” Bourne said. “Once Bajans see flying fish in the market they come and if they come and see flying fish and they see a dolphin or something else they would say let me carry along piece of that too. Flying fish equals customers.”

Flying fish has been selling for $180 per hundred from the boat with vendors reselling the national fish at between $25 to $30 per pack of ten.

Vendor Katrina Sobers said she has been sitting all day because there are no customers to serve.

“All you seeing in here are workers right now,” Sobers said.

“We just sitting down every day, I telling the truth. All like now flying fish does be coming and women does be scaling and boning but every day the boats coming one by one and when them come the fish selling extra slow. The scaling room is so dead that nobody is in there scaling right now.

“I don’t know what kind of Christmas women in the fishing industry will get.”

A vendor told Barbados TODAY: “It is extremely slow. Look at that scaling room right now and you will see nobody is in there and that is not normal for this time of the year in the market.”

After seven hours had passed since she arrived at the market at 7 a.m. to ply her trade, another vendor described the situation in the market as “sad”, causing her to wonder what kind of 2020 Christmas she would have.

A Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Blue Economy official told Barbados TODAY that the ministry is awaiting the arrival of parts from Canada to fix the ice-maker.

(anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb)