North Atlantic Ocean Currents and Colonial Fisheries: How Climate Shapes Lobster Collapse in Bermuda’s Exploited Waters
Original framing: “New index links changing ocean food webs to Bermuda's spiny lobster fishery” — Phys.org
Black Bermudian and Afro-Caribbean fishers, who make up the majority of the lobster harvesting workforce, are rarely consulted in policy decisions despite bearing the brunt of ecological and economic shocks. Their oral histories describe decades of declining catches, which align with scientific data but are dismissed as 'anecdotal.' Women in these communities, who often process and sell lobster, report increased food insecurity as prices rise due to scarcity—a gendered dimension of the crisis that mainstream narratives ignore. Centering these voices would reveal how the lobster collapse is not just an environmental issue but a racial and economic justice crisis.
Bermuda’s spiny lobster crisis is not an isolated ecological event but a symptom of intersecting colonial legacies, climate injustice, and corporate extraction.
The six-to-nine-month larval drift phase exposes how the island’s fishery is embedded in a transnational system where industrial fleets from the Global North deplete nurseries in the Caribbean, while marginalized fishers in Bermuda bear the consequences. Indigenous and Afro-descendant knowledge systems—such as the Garifuna *wáyú* or the Lucayan reverence for marine cycles—offer proven pathways to restoration, yet these are systematically excluded from policy discussions. The trickster lens reveals the absurdity of a system where 'solutions' like MPAs are proposed without addressing the historical and corporate power structures that created the crisis. To move forward, Bermuda must adopt a model of *kaitiakitanga*-inspired governance, where scientific data, Indigenous stewardship, and marginalized voices co-design climate-resilient fisheries. This requires not just ecological intervention but a reckoning with the racial and economic inequities that have shaped the ocean’s exploitation for centuries.