Barberos is one of five islands in the eastern Caribbean where white spined sea urchins known
locally as sea eggs are commercially harvested.
In expensive and earlier times, this protein-enriched sea urchin has come to hold a place of great
social and cultural significance to many Barbadians, particularly within the coastal communities
of Silver Sands and Concet Bay.
We have had a sea egg fishery in Barbados shortly after the European settlement in 1627.
It was a tradition at Silver Sands, sea eggs.
So once you are a boy, you always come on the beach on an everyday basis.
Once it's September, sea eggs catching, you're on the beach here in the sea with all the
fellas that bring them in, helping them take them up the boat and pulling them on the land
and breaking them.
Any time you finish school, then you are actually a full-fledged sea egg diver or fisherman.
From one end of the bay to the next end would be people digging holes and waiting until
the boats come down to get their sea eggs to break.
They had 32 boats that used to moor right here and the majority of them used to go harvesting
sea eggs.
The men had to go on the boat and catch the sea eggs, bring them in, take them off the
boat and bring them on the sand, and then we would take over from there, breaking them,
washing them and preparing them, for time we had to bring them home, cook them, so then
go tell them and sell them, the men didn't have no interest in that part.
Some people came to Concet, once you know you were getting the required amount that
somebody would, you just call them back and say, and they'll be up here in less than an
hour.
All the time you would be having orders to refill all the time, so you would never leave
Concet in the evening with a lot of sea eggs to sell, when you leave Concet most sea eggs
are sold.
At the turn of the century in 1900, in fact, there was a bill presented to Parliament recommending
the first, what would have been the first three-year harvest ban to protect what they
considered was a dwindling stock.
In 2001, the success of that ban was, you know, that ban was considered very successful
because of the number of sea eggs that were available for harvest, and after that we had
four years of really sound harvest, although we had to adjust the length of the season
to match what was considering slight declines in the stock size, but since 2005 we have
had no sea egg season.
It's hard to know to get sea eggs because the ban was on from 2010, but there was still
a few sea eggs over here, all of them, and you see there's still a few sea eggs, but
the porters catching them out and want to allow them to reproduce, so it soon won't
be none at all.
In 1879, legislation was put in place to protect what was called an important fishery, an important
food for Barbalians, indicates that the fishery was significant at that time, and also of
course that there was some concern as to its sustainability at the time.
Thank you.
