Barbados Fishing Industry Still Reeling from Beryl Aftermath

• When Beryl lashed Barbados, the island's fishing fleet was devastated in a matter of hours. About 75.0% of the active fleet was damaged, with 88 boats destroyed. Six months after the storm, there are signs of calmer waters.
• However, Barbadians are acutely aware that climate change means more active and powerful Atlantic hurricane seasons - and it may be just another year or two before the fishing industry is struck again. Beryl, for example, was the earliest-forming Category 5 storm on record.
• Few understand the extent of the problem better than the island's Chief Fisheries Officer, Dr Shelly Ann Cox. "Our captains have been reporting that sea conditions have changed," she explains. "Higher swells, sea surface temperatures are much warmer and they're having difficulty getting flying fish now at the beginning of our pelagic season."
• The effects are also being felt in the tourism industry, he says, with hotels and restaurants struggling to find enough fish to meet demand each month. For Dr Shelly Ann Cox, public education is key, and she says the message is getting through.
• For the island's young people, their very futures are at stake. Rising sea levels now pose an existential threat to the small islands of the Caribbean. It is a point on which the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has become a global advocate for change. She urged greater action over an impending climate catastrophe in her speech at COP29 and called for economic compensation from the world's industrialised nations.

(Source: BBC News)