Fidel Audinette, a fisherman of Punta Gorda Town, Toledo, has forwarded a petition with over 150 signatures, making an appeal to the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Rene Montero, to intervene and stop what they complain are unsustainable fishing practices by foreign fishermen, registered to fish in Belize but mostly residing in Guatemala.
We received the petition last week, and have contacted both Minister Montero and the Fisheries Department for feedback from them. However, at the time of this writing, we have not received any feedback from those parties; though we have been advised that the Minister had received the petition faxed to him earlier this month.
Audinette said he is joined by a team of seven fishermen from Eldridge, Forest Home, San Miguel and other parts of Toledo with similar concerns, in coordinating the advocacy. He told Amandala that this is not the first time they have approached fisheries authorities, appealing to them to check the use of fish traps in Belizean waters. Back in 2007, they had also written fisheries authorities.
However, they did not hear back then, and in this instance they have so far not seen a response from the Minister, Audinette said. (We note, however, that the copy of the petition we received at Amandala had no contact information, and we had to investigate to track Audinette.)
According to the fisher, “…fish are getting less and less and we can’t catch the amount we used to.”
They are also concerned that with the joint venture arrangement in place since 2009 between the Rio Grande cooperative and Jamaican investors who had brought in fish traps, the same damaging technique will continue.
The coop has 56 members, only six are Belizeans, said Audinette. Most live across the border, and they come to fish by day and night with their Belizean license. He told us he had also seen some of them with Belizean passports.
The fishermen are specifically concerned that the trap system disturbs the water bottom and the associated aquatic life, leading, they say, to a decline in fish stocks and hence hurting their livelihoods.
The fishermen that use the traps drag a device with lead weighing 12 to 15 pounds and four hooks behind dorys to retrieve their traps, breaking up the sponge, corals and sea grass, which drift en masse toward the Punta Gorda coast.
“Week after week, the sea grass washes to shore with the breeze and current,” noted Audinette.
He told us that he had been fishing for a living for 17 years. At the age of 47 going on 48, he complains that fish have grown scarcer.
Asked how things have been this season, Audinette said they have caught “very few,” as the shoals and rock patches, and other habitats that supported healthy fish populations are gone.
They are concerned, said Audinette, that with plans to issue 50 traps to each fishing coop member, the fisheries will soon crash.
The fish trapping technique is the main concern, the fisherman emphasized.
He said that they are waiting for a response from the fisheries minister.
“We need the authorities to check into it,” he commented.