Regional efforts fight to save Amatique Bay
In June 2004, News Five’s Janelle Chanona toured the Gulf of Honduras as part of a tri-national alliance by Belizean, Guatemalan and Honduran organizations to highlight the environmental significance of the coastal and marine resources. On Thursday Janelle returned to area, this time to witness the challenges facing Amatique Bay, a small corner of the Gulf where the combination of political sensitivity and economic reality is threatening ecological disaster.
Greg Choc, Executive Director, SATIIM
“It is clear that if we do not take active and aggressive measures to safeguard our marine resources, the livelihood of many of our communities will collapse.”
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
This week environmentalists, fishers, and government officials from Belize and Guatemala gathered at the Father Ring Parish Hall in Punta Gorda to develop an action plan to protect and conserve the resources of Amatique Bay.
Geographically, the bay consists of the waters between Punta Gorda in southern Belize and Punta Manabique in Guatemala. Scientific studies conducted in the area over the last decade have shown dramatic decreases in fish stock. Identified threats are illegal and over-fishing, pollution, the destruction of mangrove habitats, and a lack of human and financial capital to enforce the law.
In 2006, community leaders on both sides of the border developed a series of recommendations to mitigate the damage and manage the resources. Projects already in place include a “no take zone” near Barranco village, as well as education campaigns in the fishing villages along the coast.
But the more detrimental effects of the many shrimp trawlers from Livingston, which patrol these waters with destructive drag lines … and the hundreds of fishermen who use gill nets with mesh smaller than what is legal in Belize, have proved too challenging.
Egbert Valencio, Park Ranger
“We have had situations where we have come out at night and we have counted up to sixty boats of that kind and they usually come out at night, around six, seven and then leave at dawn, around four, five. And we’ve had the situation where we’ve seen them further down into Belizean waters.”
According to SATIIM Park Ranger Egbert Valencio, the shallow waters of the area also make enforcement difficult.
Egbert Valencio
“The fishermen when they see our boats coming they head to shore.”
Executive Director Greg Choc presented SATIIM’s list of recommendations.
Greg Choc
“Changes in gear type and limits of size of catch are needed. Respect for the closed season needs to be made mandatory. We also must grapple with the effect of upriver agricultural pollution and runoffs, the preservation of the fisheries and our world heritage site, the Barrier Reef, which also depends on careful management of our watershed and reversing the trends of deforestation.”
According to Choc, this week’s Bi-National Fisheries forum was organized by SATIIM to invoke government support for the protection proposals written jointly by the fishermen and conservationists.
Greg Choc
“As long as the situation of open access to the resources with little or no management and enforcement of rule persist, we will continue to experience these declines in catch and income.”
Alvin Loredo, SATIIM
“Perhaps with a proper management area in place, we too might be able to allow the local fish stock to recover.”
Guatemalan fishers agree that desperate times call for drastic action, but those actions must include job alternatives.
Abraham Castro Marroquin, President, Barra Sarstun Fishermen Assoc.
Translated: “We, the nine communities, one hundred and fifty families. We are shrimp fishermen and we don’t want any fishing because the area for fishing is too small and when these big ships come in there is no shrimp, no money and because the area is so limited, it is not possible for us in our small boats to make a living. And now we are facing a scarcity of shrimp…families are suffering.”
Fisherwoman
Translated: “We understand the problems as fishermen. We do our fishing one way, others do it another way. Maybe it’s not the best but we have to work with what we have.”
Fisherwoman
Translated: “Life of a fisherman or woman is hard and the fish stock is becoming less and less and if we do not have an alternative then I don’t know what will happen.”
Noel Jacobs, Regional Dir., MBRS
“Providing alternatives to fishers is not a simple task.”
Noel Jacobs is Director of the Meso American Barrier Reef Systems Project, a regional organization which has already invested more than three hundred thousand dollars in exploring diversification for fishers.
Noel Jacobs
“It’s complicated, it needs heavy investment. In parallel to be effective, you need to put in place closed access to the fishery, otherwise you are wasting your money. You can’t claim that you are creating all of these alternatives but then still leave the fishery open because then all of the fishers who have moved from fisheries create new spaces for new fishers to come so you will forever have a problem because the number of fishers is not changing. You have to break that down into how many want to be tour guides, how many want to be chefs, how many want to be bartenders, how many want to do agriculture and then for each of those different alternatives, determine what are the needs, what are the levels of investments needed, what is the marketing needed. So this is a complicated topic and I would advise anybody intends to invest money in this to do the necessary feasibility work in order to be successful.”
On Thursday afternoon, Belize’s Fisheries Minister Vildo Marin and Guatemala’s Executive Director in the Ministry of Agriculture toured Amatique Bay for the first time.
The tour included a visit to the Sarstoon River. While the Belizean banks are unpopulated, the Guatemalan side boasts a bustling fishing community and a small military base.
Fishermen and their nets are everywhere.
Vildo Marin, Minister of Fisheries
“Certainly we have to put more resources into the protection of the resources, something that we are committed to.”
Janelle Chanona
“Knowing the urgency that was stressed this morning, how soon is soon?”
Vildo Marin
“Hopefully we could put it in the upcoming budget process that we are doing right now.”
Oswaldo Morrales, Executive Director, Ministry of Fisheries Guatemala
“The communities are trying to work together and we hope the two governments try to help the community, that’s all.”
Janelle Chanona
“What would you want them to do, what’s the top of your priority list?”
Oswaldo Morrales
“Just listen and try to do something.”
SATIIM, its Guatemalan counterpart FUNDAECO and the fishers of Amatique Bay are now hoping that with the pledges of political support will come the financial and technical assistance to ensure the future of the area.
Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
One of the recommendations made during the bi-national fisheries forum was to have Belize, Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras implement simultaneous closed seasons for products such as shrimp, lobster and conch. But such initiatives would require regional cooperation. Today Ministers of the Central American Commission of Environment and Development assured the media that the synchronization of government policy is part of the Environmental Action Plan for the region.
Marco Gonzalez, Executive Secretary, Central American
“That was the base of our discussion, how to promote environmental projects in different areas of Central America. Like the Meso-American Biological Corridor, the M.B.R.S. initiative in the Gulf of Honduras to protect the Coral Reef Barrier and some other very important issues of corporation, the bi-lateral, tri-lateral or regional which are being implemented right now. Then about the harmonization of policies and regulations in the Central American area on the environment.”
Deputy Prime Minister of Belize, Johnny Briceño assumed presidency of CCAD during official handing over ceremonies in Belize City on Thursday night. Today Briceño chaired sessions of the forty-first environmental ministerial meeting of the regional body.
