Figure 35: Market, landing center, gathering place at the East End

Figure 35: Market, landing center, gathering place at the East End.

Other producers sell the fish at home, or at a specific location separate from the market. At Teague Bay a fisherman owns a shack from where he sells fish, mostly on Saturdays. He fishes for snappers on Monday and Thursday and spends all day Friday cleaning and gutting the fish. Although the place is open as a shop, it is not. He takes orders throughout the week. On Fridays and Saturdays customers can pick up their orders.

On Saturday the ambiance in the fish market is that of a private feast. Valdés-Pizzini visited the site on a Saturday (around 1:30 p.m.) to find a large group of people with plates of food in their hands staring curiously at the visiting anthropologist. On that day, as on every Saturday, friends and customers gather to buy fish but people also bring food and drinks and have a great afternoon of camaraderie. This is one of the traditions of the local fish market, which is not necessarily mediated by the exchange of money or by impersonal transactions.27

During the boom period of the Hess refinery in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the fish market benefited from the large number of workers (and fish consumers) coming from the West Indies. One fisherman recalled that during those times, fishermen would take their catch in front of banks, where workers went to cash their checks. We discussed dispersion as a characteristic of the fishery and this example shows the adaptive character of dispersion. Fish were abundant and sold

27 Other interviews also attest to the role of giving away free food (e.g., fritters, conch, water) as a means to attract customers.

well. Other fishers established small fish markets on their personal plots and became fish dealers and restaurant owners. Although this was not explored in our interviews, studies of Caribbean fish markets suggest that a small number of fishermen (usually trap fishers) invested in infrastructure and facilities to sell or cook fish as means to add value to their catch (ValdésPizzini, 1985). Women and other members of the household also participated in this process. Some developed small businesses or enterprises which are supplied by friends and relatives. We found at least five cases of this in St. Croix. All of them were relatively successful, despite changes in the fishery, closures and hurricanes. Some of these operators confided that they buy imported fish from wholesalers in St. Croix and San Juan to supply their businesses.

6.8.2. The Way of the Market

“Making a living is more or less the same, there is less fish, but they pay more for it.”

At this point we have described the main characteristics of the fish market of St. Croix, with reference to the existence of communities of fishermen. Perhaps it is safe to say that the real community of fishers is not based on a place but it exists through the market as an abstract structure that links fishery participants in a meaningful way. While the emphasis of many anthropological studies of fishing dwells on productive activities, there is a lot to learn and understand by examining the exchange of commodities (i.e., the market). The market is a network of social actors embedded in a web of relationships structured by the exchange of commodities and money. It is that place where conservation practices take effect on land, and where their impact makes sense, if they do at all.

The large bags of conch hanging prominently from a tree at Gallows Bay for buyers to see during the last three days of the closure, underscore the positive and adverse impacts of these measures. The large bags of conch sold (with a permit) to dispose of the ‘excess’ conch caught prior to the last day of the season is evidence of the power of the market, a force that also prompts the importation of conch to satisfy the local demand, especially from restaurants. As one fisherman told us “there is less fish, but the prices have increased, balancing the process.”28

28 The way of the market and that of the regulations also affected the pelagic fishing sector. As one prominent sport fisherman noted, the U.S. government put a moratorium on marlin fishing in U.S. waters (sale and consumption). However, local restaurants kept serving marlin caught by the fleet of other countries. Since marlin populations are pelagic and migratory, the U.S. government is “not protecting the