When I first opened Mac’s Pizzeria lobster pots had not yet been introduced to the Island, the fishermen had to dive. As the demand for lobster grew they were forced to dive deeper and deeper and this was dangerous. Many Bequia men got the bends and were crippled for life, making me feel somewhat guilty for buying lobster. Diving too deep and staying down for too long was taking its toll on the divers, and St. Vincent didn’t have a decompression chamber. The closest chamber was in Barbados, and for many of the divers flying to Barbados was simply not an option.
Mac’s quickly grew famous for its lobster pizza, even making the front page of the New York Times Food Magazine! It was hard to get lobster once the winter season started, either the tide was too strong to dive or the divers had gone to the Southern Grenadines. Divers would be at our front door as soon as the lobster season opened on September 1st offering to sell cheaply, at that time of year businesses were closed and they didn’t have a market for their catch. Back then I was able to buy lobster for $6.00 EC per lb. ($2.25 U.S.) and Mac and I would cook, clean and freeze as much of it as we could.
No matter how much lobster I bought in the off-season it was never enough, by New Year’s Day supplies would be dwindling and the divers would be gone. Mac and I made what seemed to be a sweet-heart deal with a fellow from Paget Farm – he could use our diving gear and in return he would sell us all the lobster he caught. He readily agreed, good regulators with depth and pressure gauges were a luxury for a Bequia diver, and I thought our lobster supply problems were solved.
Not so! As soon as the New Year started our diver was gone, and so was our diving gear. My man was happily supplying Basil’s Bar in Mustique with the lobster that was supposed to be topping my pizzas! I was pretty annoyed, I had been counting on a steady supply of langouste and it wasn’t happening. Mac didn’t seem surprised by the deception but I was quite upset, I thought it was dishonest and I wanted my diving gear back.
At the end of the season we went to Paget Farm and located the fellow, who greeted us with a big smile. He obviously didn’t feel at all guilty about reneging on his deal with us, and when I coldly asked for my diving gear he bounded up to his house to get it. He came back down the hill with the regulators minus the depth and pressure gauges. When I pointed out that the gear was incomplete he sheepishly went back up to his house and returned with the gauges. When I asked him why they weren’t attached to the regulators he told me that a lobster diver doesn’t want to know how deep he has gone or how much air he has left in his tank. Proudly showing me his watch-less wrist, he told me that a diver also doesn’t want to know how long he’s been down. I was shocked beyond belief.
Every time I see a Bequia man in a wheelchair I think of that diver’s response about the gauges and shake my head over his ignorance. Nowadays lobster is caught primarily in lobster pots and that’s certainly much safer, the younger generation are not crippling themselves by diving too deep for too long.