Listen to Your Elders: Wisdom from Papa Joe, Barbuda’s Oldest Fisherman

Originally published on the (now archived) National Geographic blog.
May 13, 2013

This past weekend I spent an afternoon with Barbudan fisherman Josiah “Papa Joe” Deazle and his family. 82 years old, still fishing, lucid, and so wise. I interviewed him as part of the Waitt Foundation's Barbuda Ocean Initiative, and it was an honor. He was in the midst of his children and grandchildren who jogged his memory and gently debated fisheries management. His great-grandchildren came and went, playing marbles and toting iguanas on leashes. It was enlightening, heartwarming, heartwrenching, and inspiring. I am in love with the people of Barbuda, and ever more committed to figuring out a way to make fishing here sustainable.

Here are some of Papa Joe’s words:

“Things are getting very bad. What you all are doing is trying to help us. This is no joke. This is a serious serious serious thing. If you’re in a country and you mash up your own livelihood what is going to happen? People don’t seem to understand that things are getting worse. If it go good, it’s good for everybody; if it goes bad, it’s bad for everybody. It’s everybody’s business.

There is much less lobster now, much less fish. I used to go get conch in water shallower than my knee. There are no more there now. You have to go into deeper water now, use SCUBA. It’s a mess.

Parrotfish is my favorite fish to eat because I have no teeth anymore. How I’m going to eat boney fish? … But catch of parrotfish should be banned. People are taking so much of them the reef is gonna die.

Fewer people are using traps now. Young people don’t want to do it. Fish pot wire is getting expensive and young people don’t want to spend the money. Instead they go diving and take the lobster out of other people’s traps –steal the lobster and the traps. We are interfering with one anothers’ traps. That’s the worst thing to happen: piracy. So when you go out you don’t get anything. We are hampering one another.

People are always fishing in the shallow waters. We need to move out into deeper waters and give the shallow waters a break, then the fish would increase again. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a mess.

Need to get the younger people to understand that things might na done, but they get scarce. They get so scarce it’s like it done. You can over do it. I’m an old man. My time is limited. Need to get the young people to come in and say this [Barbuda Initiative] is for the good of everybody. It’s a serious thing.

You have to eat. You can get things worked out, but the people just have to make up their mind to do it. If ya can’t get no fish, what you going to do? If you can’t produce no fish, can’t produce no lobster, what are you going to do? It’s not a joke. 'Too late, too late, will be the cry.'

There is supposed to be a solution to every problem.”