#captaindennis

INTRODUCING CAPTAIN DENNIS’ SHORE PICNIC TOUR

CAPTAIN DENNIS: FISH SAVIOUR

Captain Dennis Abrahams sits down on his boat in the middle of the sea and explains with the patience of a great teacher...

“There are 12 miles of coastline from here to the Black River, and it’s beautiful and unspoiled—but the area is overfished.” The thing is—he’s singlehandedly doing something about it. 

“I asked the Nature Conservancy to go on an exchange program to Belize, because I thought fishing in Jamaica didn’t have a chance of coming back, but then I saw Belize and thought ‘yes it can.’” 

He worked with the non-profit Breds, at which he’s a director, to send out a proposal to the Jamaican government about a pristine, 2+-mile stretch of beach—and they agreed it was well worth protecting—on one condition—that Dennis himself volunteer to manage the site. Happily, he obliged. 

“We are educating the fishermen on why they can’t fish there, why dropping an anchor or revving a motor can destroy the habitat. We can’t just push them aside—we must let them carry the success of this project, too,” he says. 

In these waters, fish are allowed to grow and prosper untouched, and once they grow big, they naturally swim beyond the Sanctuary’s boundaries. After just one year, Treasure Beach is beginning to gain back what it lost. The turtles are coming back, the birds are coming for baitfish—and Dennis says he just talked to a spear fisher who was thrilled to get a bonito fish. 

Dennis says, “I just want the younger generation to feel it the way I always have out here—and really understand that saving the environment is the same as saving the community.”