Belizean/American Visitor Busted with Illegal Lobster at P.G.I.A.

A Belizean/American visitor who was headed back to Los Angeles on Friday was busted at the Philip Goldson International Airport with a substantial quantity of illegal fisheries products in his luggage. The individual who is yet to be named has been issued a summons and is facing a minimum fine of twenty thousand Belize dollars for having in his possession undersized and out-of-season lobster.  This morning, Fisheries Enforcement Supervisor Hampton Gamboa provided the media with additional details of the bust.

Hampton Gamboa

Hampton Gamboa, Fisheries Enforcement Unit

“We’ve received some information that we had to get our counterpart at the airport to assist us with.  The airport authority, BAHA, the police and the Aviation Department assisted us with inspection of a certain individual that we had gotten information about who was leaving the country with some illegal products, in particular, in this case, it was lobsters during the closed season. [We need to] remind everyone that lobster season closes from March first to June thirtieth, inclusive of every year. So based on those intelligence and information we actually launched an operation to find the individual’s house. Unfortunately, because we don’t have, while doing the search, we got a call from the airport authorities that the person was checking in at the airport at that said time. We then made our way to the airport and BAHA and the police had the person in custody and they eventually handed over the person to us. We checked the individual’s suitcases that he had and there was seafood in there.  As a result, upon searching one of the suitcases, we found one in particular with lobster tails. We processed the individual there, the individual is a Belizean/American and we got all the details and everything from that said individual and that person was issued a summons for him to be arraigned in court in the near future.”