There’s one fisherman in Road Bay who gets a later start than all the others, but to my eye works a harder job. His boat, a mere 12 feet in length, has no fancy gear, no safety equipment; not even an engine. It’s powered by oars that each stay in place with two sticks called thole pins. Pulling on them almost every morning, Ivar Carty leaves his tiny home, the last one at the end of a long beach, and heads to sea.

Ivar the Diver, as some call him, amazed us many years ago when, at the age of 60, he would row out to the middle of the bay and free-dive for conch in 60 feet of water. Dive after dive, his boat would slowly settle into the water with the weight of the giant mollusks. We would watch as he made his way back to shore, one long pull after another to offload the catch.

That was the first part of the job. Next he would perform the arduous task of removing the meat from the shell by pounding a perfectly placed hole near the top. The extracted tough meat was sold to a restaurant and the shell was added to a mountain of them that grew sky-high beside the house. On his porch a small hand-painted sign announced, “Shells for Sale,” and under it we would find the most beautiful collection of polished helmets, turbans and conch.

When we sailed to Anguilla last year, we checked out Ivar’s house with binoculars. The pile of conch shells, weathered and shrunk, slumped beside the abandoned looking house patched with bits of plywood and boards. We vigilantly watched for several days until one morning, a shirtless man in faded shorts pulled a tiny boat into the sea and rowed to work. 74 years old and going strong, Ivar continues to work the sea.

I paid him a visit recently, hoping he might remember us, our boats or the little boy I took there to buy shells. It turned out that he had been watching us, because like him, our small boats are powered by oars; an oddity in a world of motorized skiffs. As he was rowing up to his beach, I was doing the same nearby and I hurried to haul my boat ashore so I could give him a hand. He set wooden rollers under his heavy boat and together we pushed and pulled it up. After I introduced myself he complimented me. “I ben watchin you. You row dat bote as good as any man.”

He slowly collected the parrot fish from the bilge of his boat and put them in a bucket. I followed him up a thorny path to his house where he covered the fish with fresh water, placed them on the stoop and began to scale his catch. Lately he’d been hauling traps because of the winter weather, but, he said, “When de weddar settles, I dive for de conch.”

I asked, “You dive in the bay? In 60 feet of water?”

“Yez, dat no problem. Jus need de weddar to settle.”

Just then a car drove up and we were joined by Freddy Hughes, who came to deliver a tiny packet of fish hooks. As we chatted I
learned that each of them began life on the sea at the early age of 14 and worked on the Anguillian built schooners that ran cargo throughout the islands of the Caribbean. Freddy explained, “I could learn as much at sea as in school.” I’ll bet he did, since he worked on schooners and motor vessels for 53 years. Now, at the age of 81, he is content to fish for fun, for a simple evening meal. The skills these two men gained at sea began, of course, with knowledge passed down, father to son, and they have continued to do the same.

After Freddy left I asked Ivar about the terrible hurricanes of the late 1990s that hit Anguilla straight on. His arms swept the air toward the house as he recounted the horror of the storm. “The sea come all da way up. Waves were lashin’ right tru de door. It didn’t break, but de waves come in.” Those waves swept the mountain of conch shells back to the sea and left his house broken and battered. It remained standing because, like most Anguillian houses, it’s built of cement blocks.

The parrot fish, small and spliny, didn’t look like they had much meat and I wondered aloud how he would cook them. “Firs, you gots to get the oil hot. Very hot. Dat important. When de oil hot, you put da fish in. It cook fast when da oil hot.” In case that wasn’t enough culinary information, he went on to explain how to corn or salt fish. He held up a fish and with the edge of his hand, pretended to cut the fish repeatedly. “Cut de fish. Cut it down to de bone, open it up so you can put de salt in.”

I thanked him for his time and before leaving, asked one last question. “Ivar, what do you think about all the changes on Anguilla.” I was referring to the onslaught of high-end hotels and the rising cost of everything.

“It no problem. I don see no change.” From his little spot, on
the end of the long beach, there hadn’t, thankfully, been much. I left hoping he could hand that down, too, father to son.

Jan