JAMAICA’S LAND CRABS ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME
Every June, Jamaica’s land crabs emerge in their ancient procession, crossing roads, filling buckets, ending up in cooking pots from Portland to St Elizabeth. It is a tradition as old as our memory, but it may not survive another generation.
The blue land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) is classified Near Threatened by the IUCN, with declining populations across the Caribbean. It matures slowly, breeds once a year, and takes years to reach harvestable size; not the characteristics of a species that recovers easily from pressure.
The red land crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) faces similar challenges: over-harvesting for food, habitat loss, and slow reproductive rates that make recovery from population crashes difficult and prolonged.
The warning signs are there: We’re seeing fewer crabs on local roadsides with each passing year.
Puerto Rico saw populations crash over four decades under the combined weight of over-harvesting, pesticide contamination, and coastal development. Regulations finally came in 1999; closed seasons, size limits, protected zones; but only after the damage was done. Recovery remains slow and incomplete. The Bahamas, with even fewer controls, offers a still grimmer picture.
Jamaica has no closed season, no size limits, no monitoring programme. Harvesting is effectively open-access. As more land is cleared for buildings and roads, pressure on crab habitats intensifies each season.
The ecological stakes are high. Land crabs aerate coastal soils, cycle nutrients, and sustain the mangrove ecosystems that underpin Jamaica’s tourism economy.
Jamaica hasn’t lost what Puerto Rico spent a generation mourning. Not yet.
#Jamaica #Caribbean #PuertoRico #TheBahamas
No apparent shock from colleague police on the scene. No immediate condemnatory statement from High Command distancing this incident as an outlier. No real sense of alarm other than “well the camera caught this one”.
This sort of conduct doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
Richard Byles says many middle managers struggle after promotion because companies elevate strong technical performers into leadership roles without preparing them to manage people.
https://t.co/16QxqLSYqy
BREAKING!!!!
World Athletics has denied transfer of allegiance requests tp Turkiye for 11 athletes including 4 Jamaicans; Jaydon Hibbert, Wayne Pinnock, Rajindra Campbell and Roje Stona.
If the JFF begins now, and works with even greater urgency than it did during this attempt to get Jamaica to qualify for the World Cup, there’s still a chance for it to do what’s required and disband itself at the earliest possible opportunity. Preferably by the end of the week.
This, and Barbados providing financial grants to parents.
It is very nice to see these kinds of concrete policy efforts aimed towards solving identified problems.
It sure beats urging, in my book.
NBA Superstar Jalen Brunson is open to representing the Jamaican national basketball team, qualifying through his maternal grandparents who are both Jamaican. https://t.co/E4fXk7pimP
Always had a problem with the term “dumbing down”. Yes, you want explanations to be simple but you also don’t want to risk oversimplifying or being too simplistic. There should always be a place for rigorous analysis, but in a way that helps to raise people’s level of thought.
Yet another car that speeds pass me on the toll in a convoy of other speeding cars only to end up in a ditch a few minutes later with the rest of the convoy coming to their aid clad in swimsuits. Kmt
Did not expect a question that starts out 'Do you think before you speak?' to go so well. A+ question from Charlotte Harpur A++ response from Eileen Gu.
Part I of my four-part research series, “Jamaica’s Middle Class: Priced Out of the Future,” was published today in the Jamaica Observer.
Part I: The Quiet Erosion – How Normal Life Became Financial Risk
It examines how middle-class stability has quietly given way to constant vulnerability, even amid macroeconomic stability.
This is my first major research project.
It asks one question:
When effort no longer delivers security, what happens to a country?
Part II next Thursday.
https://t.co/5GDKl3E9we
By: Janiel McEwan