Belize hosts regional fisheries project
Lying physically well outside the centre of CARICOM’s gravity, Belize does not get to host many of that organisation’s regional projects. But one initiative in which Belize has long held an edge is in the field of marine resources. Today ceremonies were held to inaugurate the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism. The C.R.F.M., as I found out, hopes to sustain, promote and improve the viability of a vital element in the economy of many CARICOM countries.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
The state of Belize’s marine resources has always been described as bountiful, but recently, natural occurrences, pollution and illegal fishing practices have combined to significantly threaten several species. Fishermen have reported dramatic reductions in traditional products like conch and lobster, and more disturbingly, authorities have now classified some fish as endangered, like the Nassau Grouper.
Scientific information has been limited but authorities suspect that locals and fishermen from neighbouring countries have played a major role in the depletion of fish stocks, ignoring conservation laws to harvest undersized and out of season seafood. Because Belize lacks the resources to adequately monitor a wide expanse of territorial sea, catching the criminals has proved challenging.
These problems in the fishing industry are not unique to Belize, and the situation has prompted CARICOM heads of government to establish a regional fisheries mechanism to assess fish stocks and harvesting techniques, as well as implement policies to ensure sustainability.
Byron Blake, Assistant Secretary General, CARICOM
“If you are not managing and if you are not recording what you have, it is quite possible that in a few years, some of the fish that you have will no longer be there.”
According to the Assistant Secretary General of CARICOM, Byron Blake, the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism will help beef up national and regional response to issues in the industry.
Byron Blake
“One of the things which has happened over time is that we have been training people in the national systems and the capacity laws will come from the mechanism, having specialized capacity to help with enforcement. Now the other side of this which takes money, is the industrial production; in other words, the actual fishing, the processing and so forth. Now those aspects have to be done by the private sector; it’s the private sector that undertakes the investment. So the government’s responsibility is to put in place the legislation, the regime, the mechanism and ensure that it can follow and enforce that.”
Crucial to enforcement and protection will be the cooperation from the people on the water…the men and women who fish to survive. And while the vast potential in the Caribbean will be used as bait to international investors, the common man will not become an endangered species.
Edwin Carrington, Secretary General, CARICOM
“This is a process now to seek to modernize it and enhance the benefit which the people involved in that sector, and we speak of the rural people, we speak of the unskilled, basically unskilled workers who make a living off this industry, to now enhance their skill and enhance the living they can make from this particular sector. We believe that without a mechanism of this nature, we have no way of doing that.”
“It is not that we are doing this so that big firms can come and make profit and deprive the man and woman in the street, the people who pull the seine and get the kind of support for their living…their interest has to be protected. And that is why the training is part of the task, that is why the various regulations are part of the plan, to make sure that they are also part of the beneficiaries of this particular project.”
Here in Belize, Government has encouraged investors to get into aquaculture…shrimp farming has boomed and more recently, entrepreneurs have jumped head first into tilapia production. CARICOM hopes these kinds ideas will catch on locally, and throughout the Caribbean, to reel the fishing industry into the 21st Century.
In related news, three Hondurans have pleaded guilty to illegal fishing in the Gladden Spit Marine Reserve. The trio was nabbed on Saturday night by rangers from Friends of Nature, the Placencia based conservation group that manages the reserve. The men were ordered to pay fines of one thousand dollars each or in default six months in prison. Their twenty-five foot skiff and ninety horsepower Honda outboard were forfeited to the government.
