LocationsRebuilding Livelihoods and Legacies in Barbados' Fishing Sector
June 27, 2025
(L-R) Panelists Dr. Julian Walcott, Lecturer at The University of the West Indies’ Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES); Clish Gittens, environmental filmmaker and anthropologist; Vernel Nicholls, President of the Barbados National Union of Fisherfolk Organizations (BARNUFO); and moderator Kareitha Gill, UNDP Monitoring and Evaluation Associate.
One year after the ruinous Hurricane Beryl struck Barbados, leaving behind a coast of destroyed fishing boats and a ravaged sector, a small group representing the fishing industry and other actors in the blue economy met for a frank and – at times – touching – discussion on existing vulnerabilities of the local fishing industry and their hopes for the future.
On the sidelines of the Small Island Future Festival held in Barbados in June 20 – 21, during a panel organized by the Barbados Coastal Fisheries Resilience Project – implemented by UNDP Barbados and funded by the People of Japan – somber reflections could be heard.
“We had an industry that was devastated,” shared fisherwoman fish processor Vernel Nicholls, who leads the Barbados National Union of Fisherfolk Organizations (BARNUFO). “It was a daunting feeling. It was painful. You felt the pain of the destruction of the vessels, your whole livelihood going.
“It impacted the entire sector – not just me. The fishermen started working to getting their vessels together, but a lot of [fish vendors] who depend on them to go catch the fish and come back had to look for other things to do, to sustain them in the meantime.”
Viral videos of Barbadian fishermen valiantly but unsuccessfully attempting to save their battered and sinking boats during the 2024 hurricane captured the despair of the local fisherfolk, and made global headlines, with the Barbados Fisheries Division confirming 200 damaged fishing vessels. Although remaining optimistic, Vernel is calling for timely interventions to ensure the industry can stay afloat.
“The fishermen are seeing for themselves that if something is not done immediately to sustain this sector, we will have an industry that is dying or dead,” she explained. “A whole group of people would be unemployed with their livelihoods affected and – somewhere down the road, they could find themselves a burden to the state.”
“[Hurricane] Beryl is the only thing that has caused this fishing industry to rely so much on support, but we contribute to health, food security, employment, and support many of our ministries. We don’t want to become a burden – we want to help support food security and everything else that comes with employment and sustainable livelihoods."
Audience members during the panel discussion hosted by the Barbados Coastal Fisheries Resilience project at the Small Island Future Festival in Barbados.
As a direct response to the fishers’ needs, the Barbados Coastal Fisheries Resilience project was designed to support the fishing industry in rebuilding sustainably, with funding of US$2.93 million. Monitoring and Evaluation Associate for the project, Kareitha Gill, says the team is already engaged with BARNUFO and will work closely for the next year.
“We are supporting fisherfolk across the sector through capacity-building training, technical assistance, and business development, including resilient boatbuilding techniques. The project will also be providing equipment, specifically communications devices and other tools to improve navigation and safety for fisherfolk and boat owners, and we will develop practical resources to support learning and skills transfer.”
Beyond knowledge-sharing among fisherfolk, panelists also identified a need for information sharing among partner organisations.
Dr. Julian Walcott, a Lecturer at The University of the West Indies’ Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), provides support for fishers in areas of environmental management and sustainability. His organisation intends to improve lines of communication to ensure all parties can benefit from research and information, further contributing to the industry’s resilience.
“Targeted messages for targeted audiences,” he stressed. “So [we want] to be able to take information and communicate it to the vendors and fishers in a way that they understand. Often before, we would go collect data from fishers and never show them the end product. That’s something we’re really trying to do now, where we go back and we have some sort of a session where we develop posters, infographics, etcetera.
“The information they provide to us, we give back to them so they are a part of the process. It becomes more participatory, they feel more involved and you have a better relationship through science, through the fishers and fishing industry and - on the other side - policymakers and decision makers as well.”
He recognised video and storytelling as a good way to communicate research findings, which received support from the audience, as questions were raised about strategies for ensuring the preservation and transfer of knowledge and skills between generations.
This concern was acknowledged by environmental filmmaker, anthropologist and panelist Clish Gittens, who heralded the fishing sector as an invaluable industry, emphasizing, “Storytelling gives us the capabilities to immortalize actions that happen within ocean spaces.
“A lot of the traditional knowledge, the skillset, and the cultural goods surrounding marine spaces are kept by those that actively participate in it; storytelling provides the opportunity for people outside of the sector to understand it. Fishing is an aging sector, so we must get firsthand knowledge from people about what it was, what happened, and how it evolved.
“To share information, we need to communicate outside of the technical documents and journal articles and make it more palatable in order to help to preserve traditional knowledge.”
One message remained clear from the panel and from the room of engaged audience members: the involvement of young people is vital to the sustainability of the local fishing sector. As the discussion came to a close, attendees also praised the input and continued work of the panelists, and expressed support for BARNUFO as it advances its work with UNDP.
Expressing appreciation for the Barbados Coastal Fisheries Resilience Project, Vernel anticipates the fisherfolk will be better prepared for the next storm.
“The fisherfolk have started to put their mindset back together to figure out how we are going to deal with this… that is what I call resilience, in no fancy terms. The ability to bounce back – how fast and how soon. The ability to bounce back from a disaster, pick yourselves up, and say lewwe go.”