Fisheries Offenses: Business Owners Charged for Undersized Lobsters

Brian Perriott

A U.S. businessman who is the owner of The Split, a restaurant located on Caye Caulker, could not make it to court but sent an employee to enter a guilty plea on his behalf for three fisheries offenses including possession of sixty-five undersized conch, possession of two undersized lobsters, and possession of one soft shell lobster.  Brian Perriott sat in for James Lynskey this morning at court proceedings.  After pleading guilty to the offenses, Magistrate Carlon Mendoza fined him a total of two thousand eight hundred and seventy-five dollars which he must pay by March twentieth or in default, will serve two months in prison. Another restaurant owner in the island was charged for similar fisheries offenses. Suyapa Saldiver was fined two hundred dollars for ten pounds of diced undersized lobster found in a freezer at her restaurant. Fisheries officials visited her restaurant last week and made the bust.