HUNDREDS of fish are washed up from the Yallahs Pond in St Thomas daily unto land where some residents sell and eat what they can and leave the smaller ones to rot.

According to residents, the fish leave the water when it gets warm and swim onto land where they are easy prey to humans who simply walk by and pick them up.

In Pond Side and surrounding communities, residents traverse the dried area of the pond to scoop up buckets full of fish almost daily, leaving behind those considered too small for the dinner table.

During a recent visit to the Pond Side community, the Observer North East observed scores of dead fish on the ground where they had been washed up the night before.

“People come tek up buckets of fish and when they (the fish) come out of the water at night, by morning they are dead and sometimes dem get spoil before people can take dem up,” said a resident, Lena Carey as she pointed to the numerous fish skeletons strewn on the ground.

Carey wants to see a Government initiative which would ensure a formalised industry to properly manage the process and create a more structured income for many of the unemployed people on that side of the island.

“If Government could just do something about this pond, then St Thomas would have a great fishing industry,” she said.

Henry Brown, a resident of Yallahs, agreed. He said there is almost as big a market for pond fish as there is for saltwater fish.

“Yes, there are some people who will only eat the sea fish, but quite a lot of people buy the fresh-water fish and this pond could be a source for a booming fish industry in St Thomas,” he said.

He, too, believes that a formalised industry should be crafted as this would better manage the process.

“All ah those young fish shouldn’t be allowed to just die like that and go to waste, and so if there is a proper structure in place the right thing would have to be done to ensure that all this good food doesn’t go to waste,” he said.

This formalised industry, it is believed, would help to put food on the table of residents who can no longer make a living from selling bags full of coarse salt produced by the adjoining Salt Pond at a certain time of year.

For years, some residents would scoop the salt from the bottom of the shallow lake and dry it in the sun before selling it to pig farmers and vendors of pickled mackerel and pork.

But four years ago the salt, which has been a feature of the pond longer than anyone can remember, suddenly disappeared.

“At a certain time of the year the water would just come up and at the bottom of it was all this whole heap ah salt, but one year it just never come up with the water and since then we don’t see it,” explained Carey Carey, who has lived in Pond Side for nearly 20 years.

According to Carey, whose house sits closest to the pond, persons would travel from all over to get the commodity, which was sold at $200 per bag.

The salt along with the water in the pond would appear by March of each year and would last for a few months before drying up.

“People used to be able to make a money from it, but we don’t know what happen why it don’t come up again, except to say that so many things are changing,” she said.

These days, although the water in the pond appears on schedule, there is not a shred of evidence that it once brought along the salt with it.

At this time of year when the pond is dried up, the residents use the wide expanse of land as a shortcut to the main road, dodging the crocodiles that live in the Yallahs Pond and which are sometimes to be found in the shade of the nearby mangroves when the water becomes too hot.

The Pond Side community is situated between the lake on one side and the sea on the other.

From the main road it would appear that the land at the other end of the pond is not occupied as there is a wide expanse of water as far as the eyes can see when one travels along the eastern end of the island.

However, a small dirt track provides a driving road to the community which is home to some 50 families and farm land for others.

Residents are, however, not afraid to live in the middle of these huge bodies of water, which they describe as the best forecaster of the weather.

“When we are to expect heavy rains the pond suddenly have this smell and this is how we know what is coming,” explained Carey.

The fable surrounding the origination of the pond is in itself intriguing and one which has been told by many. According to the myth, the land was owned by two brothers, one of whom became greedy and tried to get a bigger portion of the land. This resulted in a quarrel and the next day the brothers awoke to find that the land was covered with water.

However, the residents are not fearful of their ‘water edge’ community as the only scare they have ever experienced was during the passage of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 when many were trapped in their homes.

For Carey there could not be a better location as she wakes in the morning to the sun glistening on the pond at her front door and goes to sleep to the sound of the waves lapping gently on the beach at the back of her house.

Coincidentally, the backyard is also Carey’s place of work as fish vendors travel to her home each day to buy the fish she takes in on fishing boats.

On the rare occasion that all the catch is not sold from home, Carey ventures out of the area to sell it or keeps a backyard party for the many friends who always want to visit.