Caye Caulker lobstermen face losses
A story we ran earlier in the week on recovery efforts in San Pedro utilized a shot of fishermen harvesting a post-Keith boatload of lobster. But the picture may have been misleading. While the lobsters may be plentiful, most commercial fishermen at Caye Caulker no longer have the means to catch them.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
While a lot of effort has been placed on repairing roofs and rebuilding homes, the major income earner for Caye Caulker residents, lobster fishing, is lying somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
Gerald Badillo Jr., Fisherman
“I work those five hundred traps for about four days. Everyday I go like one hundred to one hundred twenty-five traps. So, I would work Monday to Thursday and then go to Belize Friday to collect my money. And then at the end of the week, if you had a good week, you’d collect out of those five hundred traps, make maybe six to seven hundred dollars.”
That was life for Badillo and the other fishermen of Caye Caulker prior to Keith. But now, even if the boats are repaired, the dreadful reality is that their lobster traps, valued at fifty dollars each, are either destroyed or nowhere to be found.
Gerald Badillo
“To my surprise, I didn’t expect the traps to move so far. They really moved far from the spot. I started looking in my area and didn’t find any of my traps there. I found a bunch of traps that belongs to other people right. From that point down to this point where I found the traps is almost about a quarter mile.”
Jose Sanchez
“How many traps did you have before the hurricane and how many did you recover?”
Gerald Badillo
“Well, so far I checked two areas. I checked one area where I had one hundred traps and I found thirty-four out of the hundred. And I went to another area where I had one hundred traps and I found about twelve traps a quarter mile from the location they were before, of course. Then I went to another area where I had one hundred and five traps and I haven’t found any there.”
Robert Usher, Manager, Northern Fishermen Co-operative
“Many families in Caye Caulker have been affected. We have over one hundred and twenty producing members in Caye Caulker as of September thirtieth, when the storm headed Caye Caulker way. I have a list of the families right here; I just got a production list. We have the Allens, the Badillos, the Chans, the Heredias, Maganas, the Marins, Novelos, Perez, Reyes, Rodriguez and Youngs. All these families have been affected very seriously by the hurricane. In terms of what it would do to the co-operative itself, this represents in my view, a loss in production of roughly one million Belize at current market levels for lobster tails.”
One of the most productive fishermen in the cooperative, who produces ten to fifteen thousand pounds of lobster per season, says this time is a whole lot worse than any previous storm.
Santiago Marin, Chairman, Northern Fishermen Cooperative
“The fishing camps that I have are totally destroyed. After Mitch, it was like a week after the waters cleared up and the fishermen could have seen the amount of damage. Now it’s going for three weeks and the water is still dirty and the rains continue and the floods continue. As long as there is flooding, the water will remain dirty. So we don’t really know when we will see our traps and if there is any left.”
Robert Usher
“It will be a while to get everything straightened out. What is so bad is since hurricane Keith. Since October first to today October twentieth, we had not had one single pound of product produced from the Caye Caulker area, so it’s seriously going to affect us.”
“The families in Caye Caulker, the local economy of Caye Caulker will be affected in the ensuing months, in the next four months, by a million dollars just from the fishing industry alone.”
Gerald Badillo
“If we don’t get back the fishing industry on track we’ll be in deep trouble and both of them are in terrible shape right now.”
While Conch may be the only thing that fishermen with working boats can produce, the co-operative isn’t taking this expensive blow lying down. They are requesting help from their biggest customer.
Robert Usher
“Red lobster is a very large seafood chain and they have over five hundred units throughout the United States. We’ve put in an appeal. We’ve told them that we’re certain that Belize would be affected and when we saw the aftermath of Keith, all these stores, these units are putting together some relief and emergency packages that they will be sending to Belize, in the ensuing weeks.”
Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
The co-operative has also helped its members by giving them small cash advances to fix engines and repair their boats.
