"Before this happen (the reddish- brown colour observed on the water), two weeks ago, all the baby fish come in, so yuh know seh a number of them dead out," said Shereen Campbell, a mother of three who has eked out a living as a fish vendor in Rae Town for the past 13 years.

"The water will soon nuh have no fish inna it. Sooner or later we nah go have a pound a fish fi get," added Campbell, 32.
She told the Observer that with customers aware of the problem in the Kingston Harbour, it was becoming increasingly more difficult for Rae Town fish vendors to sell their fish. Vendors, she added, have had to travel to as far away as Rocky Point in Clarendon to procure their supplies of fish. But she said it has been costing them $2,500 by taxi.

Jahmaal Thompson, who has been helping his "old lady" to sell fish in Rae Town, agreed with Campbell. He said that people buying fish were asking whether they came from the Kingston harbour and where the response was yes, no sale was made.

"Nobody nah buy no fish if it come from out there," he said, pointing to the reddish-brown colour in the harbour.
Richard McIntosh, a fisherman, said it was difficult to catch fish with the water discoloured.

"Mi feel bad (about it). Yuh nah really achieve nothin' when the water is like that," he said, leafing through a newspaper.
Liza Walters, an elderly vendor who said that she has been selling fish since the 1960s, said that her business was affected because of the discoloured water in the harbour. "True the red water, we really nah get no fish. A feel upset," Walters said.

In the meantime, Campbell had a word of caution to whoever may be responsible for what is happening at the harbour now and to the government agencies responsible for policing the harbour.

"Be careful. It is not only we going to suffer. The suffering going to be on their side too. Anyway yuh tek it, is bad business fi dem too," she said.

Kingston Harbour, long a site of contamination, has been impacted by problems of:

• urbanisation, with more than 18,000 persons per square mile in some small areas of the Kingston Metropolitan Area;
• its landlocked configuration;
• its relatively small tidal prism, which sees the tide removing only a foot of surface water, while the harbour is 60 feet at its deepest point; and
• the limited financial resources, according to information garnered from the National Environment and Planning Agency's (NEPA's) website.