The seventh annual Bequia Fisherman's Day seemed to be, well, a little fishy. Starting at around eleven in the morning and continuing till seven in the evening the day was full of strange smells, sites, and scales. Three stations were set up along the beach front. These stations were simple tables, one built from ply wood and another formed by a stack of palettes. Knives, mallets, sharpeners, buckets, and de-scaling devices, were carefully organized and sat idle at each station.
Each station had 4-5 men working at it, dividing up the fish between them as it came in. Boats slid across the water and halfway onto the beach. Before the smell of fish arrived in your nostrils crowds were gathered around each boat, poking, grabbing, shouting, and hoping to be the first to get fish. After the fish had been weighed and divided among the mob they were brought to each station. Here the tools, which had been waiting their turn, were being put to good use. The fish were carefully, scaled, gutted, flayed, and chopped/cut/diced into smaller pieces.
It did not seem to matter what kind of fish anyone received, just as long as they got a piece. There was dolphin, barracuda, snapper, red hein, trigger fish, skate, eel, and shark being brought from the sea. Fisherman walked off boats holding mesh sacks weighing 110 lbs filled with fish. The smell was intoxicating, scales seemed to attract themselves to any one with in 5 feet of a cleaning station. And the water had turned a thick pink color. Seagulls flocked fighting each other for the remnants of liver, or kidney, gills.
I went home that night distraught by the fact that i thought there may be no fish left in the sea the next day.
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