ESSAY

Crossing Waters- reflections on a life near the sea

Happy Sunday,

Welcome to an update of what I would like to think of as a magazine, more than a newsletter. I have renamed it, Blue Passage, inspired by a spring of travel to islands; Venice, Jamaica, Sicily and Athens. Living near the sea and crossing the oceans had me thinking a lot about how the oceans connect the places that I love and so I set out to find out why the sea calls to me.

“The sea connects what others seek to destroy.” We are connected to the sea and even on land, saltwater flows through us.

Lately, the majority of what I read has water connected to it. The conferences I attend are related to aquaculture and marine conservation, trying to figure out how to preserve the marine life that has been lost or disappeared. More than 70% of commercialized marine life has disappeared from the Mediterranean and Caribbean Sea. Corals, fish, sea urchins, and starfish can no longer be seen in tide pools on the seaside, where children love to play and look for sea life.

In Puglia, where I visited two summers ago, the fishing lines called trabucchi can be seen along the entire coast of Vieste. They remain a symbol of how man used simple tools and the sea currents to trap fish. The introduction of machines and trawls transformed the ancient way of fishing, which preserved the populations of fish for the next season. By taking out more than what the sea could reproduce, it eventually depopulated the Mediterranean Sea of fish.

In the South Coast of Jamaica, Treasure Beach, Great Bay, and Calabash Bay were once thriving fishing villages. My great grandfather, grandfather and uncles, whose ancestors arrived in Jamaica from Scotland, ( it is said) shipwrecked, landing on the coast and surviving by fishing for four generations. As a child, when I visited from Kingston, which seemed like another country, it was always exciting to come on a day when my uncles returned from fishing. I wish now that I could have seen them at work. They would bring back their haul from the Pedro Keys and I remember my aunt preparing steamed kingfish wrapped in foil baked over the coals of an outdoor coal stove. We had the juiciest lobster in garlic sauce, curry conch, curry lobster, conch soup and escoviched parrot fish. By the 1990s, the haul was no more. Fishermen now have to go further and further, making dangerous trips to find fish. There are now fewer fishermen than there were in the 70s, and my uncles have passed away- along with their traditions as the next generation has all migrated.

On a more hopeful side, in Jamaica, there have been more policies in place for the seasonal fishing of conch and lobsters. And there are now 13 fish sanctuaries making an effort to bring back some of the fish that have reduced in numbers. Can we bring back the numbers in marine life that there were in the 1960s? My calling and passion have become to teach our Caribbean youth using the of science aquaculture to bring back what the generation before got rid of.

For years, I was on an Odyssey to find home. I used to carry Homer’s Odyssey in my bag when I was putting together my book of poems, “ The Colour Wheel of my Dreams”. I would read the Odyssey whenever I was waiting on a bus or standing in a line. There are always lines to wait in Italy and in Jamaica, the countries I call home the most.

My Odyssey seemed to start when I left the shores of my birth country Jamaica, for the United States of America. Leaving the blue-green Caribbean Sea for what I thought was the grey-blue Atlantic shores of the Eastern USA. I traversed the US, trying to find where I was the most comfortable, looking for a place to call home. I drove with my husband on Route 66 from east to west coast and found myself on the Pacific Ocean in San Diego. I was drawn to the sea after spending my first winter in the North East of New Jersey.

The California Sea Lions and the Pacific Harbor Seals can be seen lounging on the sand that danced and performed on the beaches of La Jolla, which surprised and delighted me. Swimming with spotted nurse sharks that swam in a shoal in the shallow waters frightened me, but then I was told they were harmless. We often spotted the Garibaldi, a brilliant, bright orange fish, which is California’s state marine fish, starfish, and colorful nudibranchs. Grey whale sightings from the boat that took us out in the afternoons, and dolphins that swam in pairs alongside the kayak, looking for human company. It is said from the Greek Myths that dolphins are the most human of all the creatures that live in the ocean.

We drove from San Diego to San Francisco along the winding Pacific coast. It felt like a movie as we watched the most beautiful sunsets over the pale blue Pacific Ocean. The sunsets reminded me of Italy. My work with Hubs SeaWorld Research Institute took me across the border of Tijuana into Mexico, to the coast of Ensenada, where my research had me up close with the massive Totoaba, a critically endangered marine fish endemic to Mexico and California white seabass. As we drove along the coast, I saw the Olympic-sized tuna pens in the ocean, guarded by men with guns in speedboats. The most expensive fish in the world. Aquaculture at its finest.

Alas, home was calling again; California was too far from the Caribbean Sea. I traversed once again back to the East Coast, where a 3-hour flight could take me back to the warmth of the blue-green and turquoise Caribbean Sea. There, I found home in the US.

I reflected on my childhood holidays, always spent with cousins on the sands of Ocho Rios and the waterfalls of Duns River in the Parish of my father and his ancestors of Saint Ann. Now overrun with behemoth cruise ships, the once small fishing village of my father’s youth is lined with hotels that no longer give access to the locals and Jamaicans to their own beach.

Beaches that were once free for my childhood days to roam at will are now owned by hotels and private enterprises.

My work always took me to the seaside until the winters trapped me in New Jersey. Only once I went to the Jersey shore – but it was not the same as the powdery white sand that led into the blue-green warmth of the Caribbean Sea.

With each winter, the yearning for home became stronger- a siren’s call. During the pandemic, while the airports were closed in Jamaica, I crossed the Atlantic for the Mediterranean. Grey blue became the Azure Mediterranean blue. A new sea to explore. But this sea is only warm for three months out of the year. How strange it is to be near the sea and not be able to swim out in it. From late October to June, the sea is freezing cold. By May, I am longing for the sea, and so I am determined to swim in it. The outside temperature is hot enough that I can submerge up to my knees in it. Gradually, I can wade into the cold water, which is so strange. The sun is shining, yet the blue blue water is cold. My body loves it. Submerged to my neck, I am now acclimated. I can see a scattered few trying to get sun on the rocks. Only the Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes can be found in the water. Only people from Nordic lands are used to the infinite coldness and find the Mediterranean sun in April and May to be a Godsend. I, from the Caribbean, am used to year-round sun, and think the same. And so I joined them in the cold May sea.

This spring, I visited Sicily and Athens for the first time in May. On the beaches of San Vito Lo Capo in Sicily, the sea was the same brilliant turquoise I had seen on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. The water was cold and delicious. I have decided that Sicily is the place to be in May when the summer people have decided it’s not warm enough yet.

Another conference took me to Athens, and I have been thunderstruck! I have embraced Ancient Greek mythology. I am thoroughly invested in the stories of sea that anything Greek mythology will be my June reading. I want to be like Frances Mayes, the author of Under the Tuscan Sun. I picked up her Travels around the Mediterranean, and I have made a list of all the books that she read while writing this book. Through these books, I can navigate the ruins, the food and the culture. I want to see more of the Mediterranean.

The more that I travel the Mediterranean, the less I feel the sense of loss and the pain of nostalgia that I once felt being far from Jamaica. There is so much yet for me to discover. I am yearning for the Wine-Dark of the Aegean Sea. To visit Crete and the Greek Islands and Troy in Turkey, where it all began for the founding of Rome.

I know that the Caribbean Sea will always be there waiting for me. It calls me at least once per year to come back to its sea-green waves.

If you were to ask me now, where is home? I would say “where the mountain meets the sea’.