199 



The Fish Pot of the Caribbean Sea. 



By 

 Edward M. Earle, Jamaica, W.I. 



This metliod of taking the fisli alive is, I believe, peculiar to tliis 

 sea and its neighbouring waters. Indigenous or non-indigenous 

 matters but little in that which follows ; it is suflScient to state that 

 pot-fishing forms about the only mode of capture practised in these 

 regions for supplying the people with fresh fish. 



I say about the only mode of capture practised, but there are 

 some exceptions. Of nets, here and there, a seine, a turtle, and a 

 mullet will occasionally be found, but a drift, a trammel, and a trawl 

 will be searched for in vain. Hand-lining is only occasionally prac- 

 tised, and whiffing only under exceptional circumstances, as the canoe 

 travels from land to the pot, between the pots, and back to land; 

 and during the king fish season a kind of bulter or trot may now 

 and then be met with under the local name 2'>tt^<^i^nca or palanque — 

 most probably derived from the Indian — but it is very rare, and these 

 go to make up the auxiliaries. 



While the fish are never taken from the pots in an offensive con- 

 dition, they are more frequently than not in an unfit condition for 

 food ere they reach the consumer, a state of things not very credit- 

 able to a country not more than one generation behind the rest of 

 the world. But we look and hope for a change in these our fishy 

 matters ere long. 



It will perhaps be advisable if mention were made here that in 

 writing of the fish pot of the Caribbean Sea I refer more particularly 

 to those around the coast of this island and immediate waters ; and 

 although slight differences may exist in construction and working, 

 in and around some of the other islands and the mainland, these 

 differences are of so slight a nature as to call for no special mention. 



It is to be regretted that in a country like this, consuming millions 

 of pounds weight yearly of imported dry and wet cured fish, having 

 a sea teeming with myriads of fine edible fish, the waters subject to 

 no or very rarely to meteoi'ological disturbances, where as a rule boats 

 may fish and work for months together without interference from 

 the elements, the people should remain content to depend upon out- 

 side energy and capital, and the feeble, very feeble, labours of a 



