The liminal coastline in the life of a whale: Transition, identity, and food-production in the Eastern Caribbean

This paper examines ways in which a coastline, specifically the swash zone on a particular Caribbean beach, serves to inform our understanding of liminal spaces. At the precise place where the landscape transitions from sea to land with each wave's ebb and flow, artisanal whalers from the island of St. Vincent unload their day's catch and begin the process of turning animals into food products. The shoreline can be seen as a space to which the marine mammals are brought for the purpose of a multifaceted transition, in which their identities, physical forms, and even status as living organisms are changed. By examining the specific transitions that occur in this space, and by questioning why these transitions do not occur elsewhere, this paper sheds light on concepts of land and sea, life and death, and the gendering of space-all of which undergo a defined transition at the water's edge on this particular coastline.