Walter Bell had already sent two fish packers home for lack of work. The others lingered, silently eating watermelon on the empty concrete slab of the decades-old fish plant that still anchors this community.
"We’re eating watermelon. We should be working," Bell, 85, said. On typical July days last year, workers would clamor to unload, clean and pack as much as 12,000 pounds of grouper at the family-owned A.P. Bell Fish Co., founded by Bell’s father.
Less than half that catch trickles in now, supplemented by mullet and bait fish. Now, men return from weeks at sea, their fish boxes far from full; their faces grim with fear of the future.