Grenada Braces for Impacts of Climate Change

Henry Prince has lived in this fishing village for more than six decades. Prince, 67, who depends on the sea for his livelihood, said he has been catching fewer and fewer fish, and the decrease is taking a financial toll on him and other fisher folk throughout the island nation of Grenada. I heard about the climate change but never paid too much attention towards it,” Prince told IPS, adding that “we don’t catch jacks as before.” Jacks, a small fish widely used by the fishermen as bait, are also fried and eaten by poor families for whom they are an inexpensive source of protein. Over the last few years, fisher folk have not been catching the jacks, which are usually found in abundance around the month of November. Due to the scarcity of jacks, fishermen have been forced to import sardines from the United States to use as bait.

Grenada’s Agriculture, Land, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Roland Bhola believes the dwindling numbers of fish in the country’s waters are a direct result of climate change. “Our fishermen are reporting less and less catches in areas where there was once a thriving trade,” Bhola said. “We have been able to associate that with the issues of climate change … the destruction of our coral reefs and other ecosystems like mangroves,” he said. “The catch is one day good, one day bad as far as I am looking at it,” Ralph Crewney, another fisherman, told IPS. “For the last few months we hardly catch anything. Last June, it was just at the last moment that we made big catches.”

Source: http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/04/grenada-braces-for-impacts-of-climate-ch…