It takes a special kind of man to trust the blissfully inviting and sometimes menacing waters that ebb and flow along the sandy banks of the Pedro Cays. The kind that leaves family and the comforts of home for a life at sea; the kind that forgoes the relative safety of land for a near-barren sand-pile, 80 miles south-west of Kingston and St Andrew.

“Yuh haffi love it. when the sea call yuh, is like yuh cyaan’ refuse,” says Paul ‘Ras Irie’ Stewart, explaining why he’s still a fisherman after 25 years.

With no more than a primary school education, he’s been on the cay since age 12, after his uncle brought him over from Westmoreland to help cook and gut fish for sale.

His passion for the azure waters aside, his other reason for seafaring seems simply more practical – the need to provide for his common-law wife and their five children.

“When yuh have pickney yuh will do anything. you want them fe go a school, yuh nuh want dem fe hungry,” he adds, affixing his eyes to the near complete fishing pot he’s working on.

Fish-pot-making is a hobby of his – one that he now uses to supplement his earnings from fishing.

“If a man seh ‘Rasta, me have five pot fe yuh nail up’. me can get a $4,000 right deh so. Every mickle mek a muckle. Yuh haffi do every likkle thing. yuh cyaan’ come yah so come gaze,” ‘Ras Irie’ tells Sunday Observer, adding that, as a boy he’d wanted to study carpentry before resuming his rendition of Beres Hammond’s It’s Not Official Yet that blares from the speakers in a nearby zinc shop.

“More dance keep yah dan weh deh a mainland,” he says, laughing at his comment.

He stretches and openly expresses his longing for the flesh of Barracuda – a fish that he says is “more [ferocious] than shark but him meat eat sweet”. The Rastafarian ‘sea king’ shares anecdotes about the terrible fish – famous for ripping through wires and attacking divers. “It best fe give him one head lick,” he shares, “if yuh miss, him a go come after yuh”. The knowledge he’s amassed over all his years at sea is obvious.

‘Ras Irie’, who visits the sea roughly three times per week for six hours, believes that, though the perils – both on and offshore are many – the “livity and the money” are sometimes worth it.

“Sometime yuh come up wid nutt’n’. fish tear-up yuh net, a next time yuh pot full and yuh catch go fast, fast,” he adds. While there’s no set rate for a pot of fish, he says that a fisherman can easily make hundreds of dollars from a day’s catch.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s Annual Report 2004-2005 outlines that 25 per cent of all fish caught in Jamaican waters come from the Pedro Cays, while it estimates that some 9,495.5 tonnes of marine fish were caught over the period.

‘Ras Irie’ is one of nearly 400 people who spend months away from the mainland, calling the Cays – with their minimal flora and no naturally occurring source of drinking water – home, even as they rely on the unpredictable chase between man and marine life for their own survival.

But Hurricane Ivan that hit Jamaica in 2004 threatened the survival of the fisher folk who inhabit the Pedro Cays, destroying portions of the coral reef where many fish live.

“The hurricane bank up a whole heap a sand on the reef,” says fisherman Devon ‘Knowledge’ Rowe, “so the fish had to go into deeper waters”.

‘Knowledge’ and other fisher folk gather outside ‘Ras Irie’s’ shop, eager to share their experiences about life on Pedro Cays. Apparently the eldest of the five men, Natty Rowe is an old grey-haired fisherman who’s been doing business on the Cays much longer than most.

“It’s only recently the fish start to come back, and things ’round ‘ere get likkle better,” he says.

But things aren’t just getting better off-shore.

“Bwoy, me glad fe de soldier dem, dem run it good.without the soldier dem we wouldn’t have no cay,” Natty says, explaining that the soldiers now execute justice instead of the ‘vigilante-type’ order that dominated in the past.

“Yuh nuh really have nuff violence, but time gone man never ‘fraid fe draw cutlass or shoot man wid fish gun,” Natty adds. He notes too, that in the past, fishermen would steal lobster pots (set on the sea floor) but “that get cut down since the soldier dem a run de place”.

The JDF base at Pedro Cays has been in operation since November 29, 1996.

‘Knowledge’ tells the Sunday Observer that he believes the presence of the JDF Coast Guard keeps foreign fishermen away. At the same time, ‘Ras Irie’ adds that while incidents of encroaching fisher folk from neighbouring territories like Honduras, Panama and Haiti have decreased, it is still difficult to get a good catch.

“Before, you could all get one fish weigh a four or five pound, now yuh cyaan’ get dat.too much people inna de water, so they catch all the fish and leave the young one dem” he says. He further explains that the fisher folk from these countries are mostly divers who venture to the sea floor and steal the fish from the pots set by the cays’ fishermen.

But complaints about life on the cays don’t stop there.

“Right now, water [or the lack of it] is the biggest problem pon de cay,” ‘Ras Irie’ says, explaining that because the cays are over-populated, the kegs of water that the Coast Guard distribute are too few to go around.

The fisherman adds that the widescale availability of bottled water has somewhat lessened the incidence of belly aches usually caused by their drinking contaminated water, and the small amount of water distributed does not allow for proper hygiene practices.

“We cyaan’ tek a good shower and we want toilet,” says ‘Knowledge’. Natty interjects that only four run-down, make-shift latrines exist on Middle Cay – the second largest of the three sandy embankments that comprise the Pedro Cays. Only one other -Top Cay – is inhabited by fisher folk, while the smallest is home to several species of seabirds, hence the name, Bird Cay.

And on these often unnoticed land masses off the coast of Jamaica, where cell phones are useless and electricity (albeit from a generator) is a privilege, bird and man seem to share a symbiotic relationship – birds serve as a sort of aerial compass, and in exchange for guidance, are rewarded with the spoils of the various catches.

“The bird dem helpful to we.sometime we all lost, we just follow them come back in. Dem a we friend and we pilot,” says old man Natty. He adds that the various flocks often perform an aerial dance, gliding across the air in circular patterns – a signal that alert the land-bound fishermen that a boat has just returned from sea.

But while their experience may sound like a tropical paradise complete with birds, alluring crystal waters and a panoramic view of an endless blue sky, ‘Ras Irie’ says that it is anything but.

“Sometime yuh go home yuh lose all yuh woman, this type of work bad fe family life but yuh jus’ haffi hope seh yuh tek one good woman who understand seh money haffi mek,” he says.