Dear Sir,

My daughter in Bermuda recently sent us a short YouTube film which featured the ever-amazing Teddy Tucker, among others, talking about the alarming decline of fish around the island. Why it was entitled Shark Country specifically defeats me. Jaws? Peter Benchley? No matter ...

First of all, the film was a shock. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Since boyhood, I like so many others had been out there as well. Hooking a few and poking around under reefs looking for the odd lobster or two. We all did it. Never gave it a second thought.

Come home from the bay with a few yellowtails or a lobster and Ma would be pleased as punch. She came from the state of Maine, so the lobster was especially appreciated. Dad never touched the things. He was Old Bermuda: preferred codfish and potatoes (no avocado, thanks). Loads of melted butter. He said crawlers were bottom feeders. Unclean! Yuck!

Wonderful to hear Teddy Tucker and those other Bermudian bies with their deep Bermuda twang. Was lucky enough to go out a few times on Teddy’s boat. He dove. I observed. Mostly his daughter, Wendy. Wow!

Anyway, he would haul up these huge groupers. Used thick nylon line, on a sort of winch thingy. Knew where to find them since he spent so much time in the water. The man missed nothing out there on the reefs. He would grill up right on the boat. Amazing!

Teddy knew way back then there would be problems. He talked about the tragedy of longlining. Recommended by the United Nations, apparently. Go figure. “Gonna be all fished out in no time,” he said.

Was he right? If anyone, Teddy would have known.

The next guy, a young spearfisherman named Amos in Somerset, also talked about groupers. Said they were all over the place back in his day. Then came the guys who were trawling for them. Seem to recall this nifty sports boat Cabo — a big sucker with outriggers — anchored there in the inlet on the north side of Scaur Hill. Someone told me once that on the way back from a day of fishing for yellowfin, Cabo would drag a trawl over the reefs and catch some really large grouper. Gotta be a limit somewhere, though.

Stuart Joblin, to his credit, realised much the same thing when he shut down the lobster tournaments he had been organising. I mean, how many tournaments does it take to put even a minor dent in the lobster population? So, yeah, good on ya, Stuart.

Dive company operators have noticed a decline as well. The guy in St George was astounded by the lack of sharks. I’m not too bothered by not seeing sharks, by the way — a 4ft shark is a 14ft shark to me! And Philippe Max Rouja, cool with the windblown look, has reacted on it as well. A good thing, too, considering his position on the island in charge of wrecks. Good of him to leave the spear home these days.

But there are other aspects to be considered here as well. I grew up at Hungry Bay. Spent much, if not all my youth, in that bay ... along with the “Hungry Bay Boys”, two of whom had fishing licences since as long as I can remember. We’ve all fished out of that bay, so we knew the reefs, the shoals, inshore and offshore “as well as Bermuda’s roads”, as Wendy Tucker put it. I was out there with my mate Pete Bridges a while back. We did pretty well with the speckled hinds.

Here’s the thing, though: on the outside of the reef line just west of Hungry Bay, there has always been for as long as I can remember a large sewer outlet spewing raw sewage into the open ocean. You can check with the Corporation of Hamilton on that one. Drive down to the end of Southcourt Avenue and have a look yourself. Way out there, past the reef line. Every so often, a big burp on the surface is visible. Millions of gallons over the years.

The pipeline originates in the City of Hamilton, runs past the hospital, where I understand it picks up volume and stuff, along under Point Finger Road — they are working on that section of pipeline as I write this, apparently — up Seabright Avenue, down the cliffs to the water, and then out through the reefs.

How do I know this? First of all, I watched when they laid that pipeline, and I’ve dived on it more than once. Not pleasant. Teddy did, too. Worked on it for the corporation at one point. Had his big boat round on that side. That’s how I got to dive on it. If you dive today, though, on either side of the entrance to Hungry Bay you will immediately notice two things: lots of dead or dying corral covered in brown gunk, and very little fish. Dived on the one off Elbow Beach, too. Guess that came from the hotel. Did quite a bit of diving myself back in the day.

A while ago — quite a while ago, actually — my wife and another couple were swimming in the waters off John Smith’s Bay down there on the South Shore. Beautiful day. Nice inshore breeze from the southeast. Not too many waves, which my wife appreciated; she’s a bit squeamish! In short order, we had to leave the water with itchy skin and an eventual rash, which we couldn’t get rid of for days. Loads of ointment and quite a bit of cursing.

Apparently, there is an outlet down there on the coastline as well. Where’s that coming from? Interesting enough, however, unlike around Hungry Bay, the coral formations on reefs off John Smith’s are still in good shape — or at least they were then. Did some diving out there as well, with my mate Delaey Robinson. I wonder, is there a line from Devonshire Bay? Maybe from the former St Brendan’s Hospital?

So here’s the thing: how many raw sewage lines are there around Bermuda’s coastline? Pumping out not only raw sewage, but who knows what else? We’re talking decades here! Half a century at least. St George’s, John Smith’s Bay, Devonshire Bay, Hungry Bay, Elbow Beach, Sinky Bay, the Dockyard area? Note that almost all are off the South Shore with prevailing winds and currents from the southwest.

The Gulf Stream comes up against the South Shore, swirls around behind the island and all round those lovely reefs out there to the north. Not rocket science, people. Stuart Joblin mentioned the absence of hogfish in Hogfish Cut. Amos, no more groupers. Wonder why? I bet these guys have already figured it out.

The next obvious question would be, what effect has all that raw sewage had on the island’s fish life over the past 50 to 60 years? Dumb question, right? Shades of Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth maybe? You can draw your own conclusions, of course. But you may want to consider the onus might not be entirely on overfishing. Not everywhere around the island anyway. Cost-saving; all governments do it.

I live in Sweden now; for a long time, actually. Done a bit of fishing for salmon off the coast here in the Baltic Sea. People here say, “Don’t eat the salmon!” Huh? Fantastic critters. Some of them up to 30 pounds. Smoked salmon? Wow!

Rivers flowing into the Baltic from Russia, the Balkan states and Poland. They have been dumping chemical waste in those rivers for decades apparently. Eastern bloc countries, what can you do? Mercury. Gets in the salmon. Not good.

Closing on a lighter note, my daughter also sent some pics of two rough-looking Bermudian fellas, each holding up a huge hogfish which they had evidently caught off some dock. Back in the day, it is unlikely I would have had the cojones to point a sling spear at one of those suckers. Impressive.

JACK GAUNTLETT

Stockholm, Sweden