CARIBBEAN EXPEDITION, 1956 — SCHMITT 451 



Captain Nicholson had told us of the great seine hauls made in 

 favorable weather by the natives of the adjacent villages on the beach 

 fronting Pigeon Island. The net is dropped and the haul begins far 

 out in the bay at the very break of dawn. We went ashore an hour 

 and a half or two hours later — nearer 6 o'clock. Even then there was 

 scarcely light enough for regular color film — all that we had along. 

 More of interest to us than the seine haul was the sight that greeted 

 us as we struck the beach — as far as we could see in either direction — a 

 conspicuous pink windrow of crab larvae in the megalops stage, and 

 as we looked more closely the lapping wavelets and the waters of the 

 receding tide were "peppered" with more of these larvae, three or 

 four or more to every cubic foot of water. The natives said they had 

 never seen anything like it before. Meanwhile the wings of the seine 

 were coming closer and closer to shore. One of the lines, the left one 

 looking at the shoreward moving seine, was manned by the womenfolk, 

 with one lone man in the lead at the water's edge. The other line was 

 being pulled in by an all-man crew. Natives in dugouts or canoes off 

 either end of the net beat the water with their paddles and oars or 

 threw stones to frighten back any fish that might try to escape the 

 net. After three or four hours of labor the net was ashore. The catch 

 was pitifully small — just not enough fish to go around. Which of the 

 many native families participating got what and how much, we were 

 unable to determine. It certainly looked as if the place was being 

 overfished, too regularly and too thoroughly. Specimens represen- 

 tative of the catch were bought for the Museum. Elsewhere in the 

 Lesser Antilles, the seine hauls do not appear to be any more pro- 

 ductive, perhaps for the same reasons. At least in Martinique in the 

 French West Indies, and in St. Kitts in the Leewards, this seems to 

 hold true. In Martinique, where we drove along the shore for a con- 

 siderable distance from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, more than in 

 any other island there were numerous large seines drying on every 

 suitable beach. One haul that we witnessed not far from St. Pierre 

 was most scanty. Certainly something should be done to rehabilitate 

 the shore or seine fisheries of these islands. 



At 5 o'clock on March 22 we made Fort-de-France, which must be 

 a popular port of call, for we found several yachts there from the 

 States, including the Maverick, another of the Nicholson charter 

 yachts, and one from South Africa hailing from Hong Kong and 

 on a trip around the world. Early the next morning we paid our 

 respects to our American Consul, William B. Cobb, Jr., whose in- 

 troductions enabled us to make a number of valuable contacts and to 

 arrange for Dr. Smith to meet, at Guadeloupe, Dr. Henri Stehle, a 

 botanist colleague with whom he had long beeen in correspondence. 

 This last was attended to by Dr. Blanche, Directeur du Service de 



