You can find it all – Snapper, Parrot, Butter, Jack – almost every kind of fish, it seems, is available at the Old Harbour Bay fishing beach in St Catherine.

A working toilet, running water, or even a garbage skip for the fishmongers to dump the discarded fish parts, however? Unlikely.

Not surprisingly, the entire area carries a melange of sickening smells. The fishing beach, located to the east end of the bay, is lapped by greenish-brown water, with odd bits of seaweed mingling with loose debris like plastic forks and bottle caps. Onshore, to the typical salty seaside smell add rotting fish parts, the noxious fumes of boat engines, food cooking and the distinct odour of faeces in some areas. The end result is a rancid aroma, not for persons with a weak stomach.

But still, lots of people, some from as far away as Mandeville or Kingston, go there to purchase fish. Fishmongers there claim that depending on the weather, they sometimes sell tens of thousands of pounds of fish each week. And dozens of people live right there on the beach, in flimsy zinc and plywood structures that some fishers claim harbour vermin and other pests.

“The place is really disgusting. Look at how the garbage pile up! And most of these places, although many of them are supposed to be cook shops where people buy food, most of them have no water, and there is no public sanitary convenience on this beach,” Compton Campbell, a fisherman and lifelong Old Harbour Bay resident, complained to the Sunday Observer.

As he escorted the news team along the beach, hopscotching over big items of garbage like abandoned fishing boats, and smaller types such as discarded styrofoam boxes and the ubiquitous black plastic ‘scandal’ bags, Campbell, an amateur historian and an active member of the Old Harbour Bay Community Development Association, expressed concern over the health risks that people on the beach and those who buy from them face.

“It can’t be good. It can’t be safe,” he lamented. “The garbage just piles up and nobody takes care of this area. Somebody nuh must get sick soon?”

Almost as if to prove his point, a gust of wind blew, scattering microscopic shards of fibreglass from where a fisherman was repairing his boat on the beach in the open, mere feet away from where a group of women squatted, scaling fish for sale. In an instant, several of the people in the area began blinking uncontrollably and clearing their throats of the irritant.

Every so often, it seems, this area comes to the attention of health officials, local government authorities, environmentalists, and the media, but usually, it’s when the place gets so nasty that not even the people who live, sell fish or buy fish want to be there.

Two years ago, the beach was shut down by local and public health authorities, but after it was cleaned and reopened, it was just a matter of time before the filth amassed again.

“Out here so nasty for true,” one rotund woman, her forearms dripping with fish scales, shouted out. “You fi mek people know how dem have we out here pon di dutty beach, an how no garbage nah collect roun’ ere.”

Much of the problem, explained Greg Reddicks, a young man who lives in the Old Harbour Bay village and fishes occasionally, is due to the fact that the beach is virtually unregulated, with wrongdoers allowed to act with impunity.

“Dem need to get rid of all dem ghetto place on the beach,” said Reddicks. “Nobody should be allowed to just come and put up shacks as they feel, but because nobody is there to stop them from doing it, the people just continue to set up where they want, dash garbage anywhere, and just nasty up the place.

“Look at all like dat,” he said, gesturing to a woman squatting under a board lean-to scaling fish just inches away from a stray dog that seemed to be suffering from mange.

Officially, control of the beach rests with the St Catherine Parish Council, which is supposed to control occupancy and maintenance. A local group, the Old Harbour Bay Fishermen’s Cooperative, whose members make up the bulk of people who use the beach, is supposed to regulate the use of the beach by its members, and to ensure that the facilities provided are used appropriately.

But everyone, it seems, has failed.

“Dis happen all the while. A di parish council fi sen truck fi collect garbage, but them don’t business a hoot. I can’t tell the last I see truck come here to collect garbage,” said an elderly man resting his arms on an abandoned boat.

On Friday, mayor of Spanish Town and chair of the St Catherine Parish Council Dr Andrew Wheatley told the Sunday Observer that the parish council was aware of the solid waste situation at the beach, and that he had personally taken steps in the past week to bring about a resolution to the garbage crisis.

“Once we got the report last week from the councillor, we sent out a team to do an investigation of the area, and the next day I spoke to solid waste (the NSWMA), and they’re supposed to get some trucks out there. By early next week you should see some action,” the mayor promised.

The council, he said, had been in dialogue with the users of the beach before – on several occasions in fact – and had made many agreements which have not been upheld on either side.

“I’ll tell you something, we have been out there in the past, and we have cleaned the beach before, and the people just go back out there and throw the garbage everywhere,” said Wheatley. “They comply for about a month or two, then after that they just go back to throwing garbage all over the place.”

After the near-annihilation of the fishing community by storm surges related to Hurricane Ivan in 2004, he continued, the occupants, as individuals and through various community organisations, agreed not to build back the homes, shops or shacks that before Ivan had sprung up on the beach.

“I’m surprised to see that they have now started to erect or have erected illegal structures,” the mayor said. “After Ivan, the council met with them and instructed them not to build any structures on the beach, and the co-op, the community group, everyone decided that they were going to comply with the agreement made at the request of the parish council.”

This time around, however, the mayor said the council would not wait for a natural disaster to destroy life and property or rid the beach of its unsightly man-made debris.

“All illegal structures will be removed. And we are very serious about that,” he vowed.

He also promised that the parish council would be more vigilant and proactive in its management of the area.

“If it is that the trucks are not going down there on a regular basis, we need to do something about that on our part,” said Wheatley.

“But the people can dispose of the things better,” he pointed out.