Something unusual is happening off the coast of Grenada. Tiny, silver fish are flocking to shallow waters by the million and filling fishermen's buckets by the ton.
It could be climate change, said local fisherman Eldmond Mitchell. But he doesn't buy it.
"I believe the good Lord sent the jacks," he said as he proudly held up his catch for the day. "Good blessing comes, you have to accept it."
Good times today, but what about tomorrow? A treasure trove of fish could be a blessing in disguise.
The problem here is warming waters, Crofton Isaac, an assistant biologist at Grenada's Fisheries Department, later told Xinhua. It has created abnormal fish behavior, similar to when millions of fish were found dead along Grenada's coastlines in 2005.
Isaac cautioned against singling out climate change, stressing that it might be a result of el Nino -- the warm phase of an atmospheric cycle in the Southern Pacific.
But what is unusual, said Crofton, are such high temperatures over a sustained amount of time, leaving open the possibility that climate change could be exacerbating a natural phenomenon.
And that's often the trick with scoping out the effects of climate change. Sometimes it's not clear cut. Sometimes the changes are subtle leaving more questions than answers. For a developing island nation like Grenada, the stakes of answering those questions are extremely high.
