Barbuda4Real

To older Barbudan fishermen, January is a month that is not very friendly to people who work on the sea.  It is windy and the seas can transform from calm flatness to viscious ‘white cap’ waves in an instant.  The water is also cold and the ‘ground swells’ (storm waves) stir up the water reducing visibility to zero.  These conditions are driven by winter storms originating in the north Atlantic.  The waves generated there eventually reach our shores.

Inspite of the challenges created by these conditions, it is believed that this period marks a time when the sea ‘cleans itself’.  The bottom is churned up, debris is washed up onto the shorelines and dead algae is washed off the reefs.  There is some truth to this.  The churning do release stored nutrients and productivity does go up as evidenced  by the prolific growth of some algae, for example the ‘seamoss’ for which Barbuda used to be famous.