Coalition for Sustainable Fisheries Launches Ban Gillnets Campaign

A group of commercial fishermen are leading the charge to ban gillnets across the country.  They say there are damaging effects of this indiscriminate practice to fish stocks and as such are gravely concerned about the future of the fisheries industry, as well as their livelihoods.  Banded together as the Coalition for Sustainable Fisheries, the group of conservation organizations, tourism representatives and sports fishing enthusiasts are moving ahead with one objecting, banning the use of gillnets.

Andrew Roe, Chair, Coalition for Sustainable Fisheries

Andrew Roe

“The Coalition is a group non-governmental organizations, fishing associations, commercial fishermen.  A group of people who have some sort of interest in the fishing community and they‘ve now banded together to push forward a ban on gillnets.  Every organization, in its own capacity, fought the use of gillnets at some point and we decided, you know what, lets bring our collective activities together.  So the Coalition has been formed and the idea is that we have presented a proposal to the Government of Belize to put in place a ban on the use of gillnets within the 2019 and what the Coalition intends to do is raise funds in order to assist those fishermen who are impacted by a ban with a transition to an alternative livelihood, keeping in mind that most of these fishermen who use gillnets only do it for supplemental income.  There are, as far as we are aware, few to no fishermen who actually depend on gillnets on a daily basis, most of them just use it as a supplement for their income for other activities.”