August 26, 2013

To: Colin bh

There is a simple answer to your query made in the article entitled “Fish is the Golden Goose”, that appeared in the August 25, 2013 edition of Amandala.

You stated that “it is extremely difficult to understand how a country that is investing so much in tourism can’t run with the sound advice of Dr. Gale about management of the fishing industry,” the advice being to ban gill-net fishing.

It is easy to understand why the Government won’t run with the advice if one looks at the whole picture. Operations such as those contemplated for Norwegian Cruise Line at Harvest Caye; potentially have something in them for politicians. Banning gill nets, even though it may be more beneficial for the country, has nothing in it for the politicians. So why should they care?

You wrote of “Mrs. Audrey and Oceana who are responsible for taking trawlers out of our waters.” Bear in mind that it was the same Dr. Gale who for years wrote about the destruction created by the shrimp trawlers. Nothing was done to ban the trawlers until Oceana came up with more than $400,000.00 that was paid to a politically prominent company that had an interest in the trawlers.

Don’t expect gill-net fishing to be banned.

Rodger Williams