There are few clearer signs of the devastating power that Hurricane Beryl unleashed on Barbados in July than the scene at the temporary shipyard in the capital, Bridgetown.
Dozens of mutilated and cracked ships stand in piles, gaping hulls, their rudders torn off and cabin windows broken.
However, they were the lucky ones.
At least they can be repaired and return to the sea. Many others sank, taking the entire family’s income with them.
When Beryl hit Barbados, the island’s fishing fleet was destroyed within hours. About 75% of the active fleet was damaged, and 88 ships were completely destroyed.
Charles Carter, who owns the blue and black fishing boat Joyce, was among those affected.
“It was really bad, I can tell you. I had to change both sides of the hull, down to the waterline,” he says, pointing to the now intact ship in front of us.
It took months of restoration and thousands of dollars to get it back to this point, during which time Charles could barely fish.
“It’s what I live for, I make a living, and fishing is all I do,” he says.
“The fishing industry is messed up,” repeats his friend, Captain Euride. “We’re just trying to get the pieces back.”
Now, six months after the storm, there are signs of calmer waters. One warm Saturday, several repaired vessels were returned to the ocean with the help of a crane, a trailer and some government assistance.
Seeing Joyce back on the water is a welcome sight for all fishermen in Barbados.
But Barbadians are well aware that climate change means more active and powerful hurricane seasons in the Atlantic – and it may only be another year or two before the fishing industry is hit again. Beryl, for example, was the earliest recorded Category 5 storm.
Few understand the scale of the problem better than the island’s Chief Fisheries Officer, Dr. Shelly Ann Cox.
“Our captains are reporting that sea conditions have changed,” she explains. “With the bigger waves, the sea surface temperatures are much warmer and they are having a hard time catching flying fish now at the start of our pelagic season.”
The flying fish is the national symbol of Barbados and a key part of the island’s cuisine. But climate change has been damaging supplies for years.
Oistins Fish Market in Bridgetown still has flying fish available, along with marlin, mahi-mahi and tuna, although only a handful of stalls are open.
At one of them, Cornelius Carrington, of the Freedom Fish House. he fillets kingfish with the speed and dexterity of a man who has spent many years with a fish knife in his hands.
“Beryl was like a surprise attack, like an ambush,” says Cornelius, his deep baritone voice drowning out the babble of the market, reggae and the clatter of knives on cutting boards.
Cornelius lost one of his two boats in Hurricane Beryl. “For the first time, such a hurricane came from the south, normally storms hit us from the north,” he said.
Although his second boat enabled him to survive financially, Cornelius believes that the hand of climate change is increasingly present in the fate of fishermen.
“Right now everything has changed. The tides are changing, the weather is changing, the sea temperature, the whole pattern has changed.”
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.
“Perhaps because we are an island and so connected to water, people in Barbados can speak well about the impact of climate change and what it means for our country,” she says.
“I think if you talk to the kids, they are very knowledgeable about the subject.”
To see for myself, I visited a high school – Harrison College – as a member of a local non-governmental organization, the Caribbean Youth Environmental Network (CYEN), and talked to members of the school’s Environmental Protection Club about climate change.
CYEN representative, Sheldon Marshall, is an energy expert who quizzed the students on greenhouse gases and steps they could take at home to reduce carbon emissions on the island.
“How can you, as young people in Barbados, help change climate change?” he asked them.
After an interesting and lively discussion, I asked the students what they thought about Barbados being on the front lines of global climate change, despite having only a small carbon footprint.
Personally, I’m very pessimistic, said 17-year-old Isabella Fredricks.
“We are a very small country. No matter how hard we try to change, if the big countries – major polluters like America, India and China – don’t change, everything we do will be pointless.”
Her classmate, Tenusha Ramsham, is a bit more optimistic.
“I think all the great leaps in history were made when people collaborated and innovated,” she claims. “I don’t think we should be completely discouraged because research, innovation, technology creation and education will ultimately lead to the future we want.”
“I think if we can convey to the global superpowers the pain we feel seeing this happening to our environment,” adds 16-year-old Adrielle Baird, “then it would help them understand and help us work together to find ways to fix the problems they’re dealing with.” we meet.”
For young people on the island, their very future is at stake. Sea level rise now poses an existential threat to small Caribbean islands.
It is at this point that the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has become a global advocate for change – calling for greater action on the looming climate catastrophe in her COP29 speech and calling for economic compensation from the world’s industrialized nations.
On its shores and in its seas, Barbados seems to be under siege – facing problems from coral bleaching to coastal erosion. While the impetus for action comes from the island’s youth, older generations are witnessing changes.
Steven Bourne has fished the waters around Barbados all his life and lost two boats in Hurricane Beryl. As we look out over the coast from a dilapidated shack beach bar, he says the sands of the island have shifted before his eyes.
“It’s an elemental attack. You can see how the beaches are washed away, but years ago you would be sitting here and you could see the edge of the water coming on the sand. Now you can’t because the sand is so packed.”
Coincidentally, in the same bar where I spoke with Steven was Home Secretary Wilfred Abrahams, who is responsible for national disaster management.
I told him it must be a difficult time for disaster management in the Caribbean.
“The whole landscape has changed completely,” he replied. “It used to be rare to get a Category 5 hurricane in any given year. Now we get them every year. So the intensity and frequency is a cause for concern.”
Even the length of hurricane season has changed, he says.
“We used to have a rhyme that went: June, too soon; July, readiness; October, all done,” he tells me. Weather extremes like Beryl have rendered such an idea obsolete.
“What we can expect has changed, what we have been preparing for all our lives and around which our culture is built,” he adds.
Fisherman Steven Bourne had hoped to retire before Beryl. Now, he says, he and the other islanders have no choice but to continue.
“There is no point in being afraid or anything like that. Because we have nowhere to go. We love this rock. And we will always be on this rock.”
