Data produced by the Belize Fisheries Project (BFP) shows that 17 of 20 commercial fish species are overexploited. The fisheries scientist who created that stock assessment methodology which the Fisheries Department still uses, confirms this. Information delivered under the Freedom of Information Act fails to verify the Fisheries Department’s claims of sustainable commercial fish stocks. The Belize Fisheries Department continues to deny the BFP findings.
By Marco Lopez
HOPKINS, Sat. Oct. 5, 2024
Belize is renowned for its pristine marine ecosystems. The nation is, however, facing a critical threat to its fisheries, according to the leading minds in fisheries science. A comprehensive study by these international fisheries experts revealed a worrisome reality: 17 commercial fish species are overexploited. This alarming revelation challenges the Belize Fisheries Department’s (FD) persistent claims of healthy and sustainable fish stocks, and raises serious concerns about the future of Belize’s blue economy.
This story looks at conflicting narratives, the scientific evidence supporting the findings, a dire warning from the scientist who created the stock assessment methodology still used by the FD, and the implications for Belize’s marine space and fishing communities.
Prevention is better than cure.
The adage – prevention is better than cure – reigns true when considering fisheries management. In Belize, the blue space is internationally renowned for its vibrance and abundance. This abundance, however, could at times lead to the impression that this very fragile and finite resource is well off. In turn, this leads to inadequate management and unfettered extraction from the waters.
This is the fallout being witnessed by fisherfolk across Belize.
“Usually when the lobster season opens, I am making between 125 – 150 pounds of lobster every day for that week. Right now, it is between 50 and 75 pounds of lobster a day,” Dale Fairweather, a fisherman of over 45 years, and Chairman of the Belize Federation of Fishers (BFF) said.
The experience of fisherfolk has been corroborated by independent research conducted by the Belize Fisheries Project (BFP), a consortium of non-governmental research organizations that include leading fisheries management experts from Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI), the Environmental Law Institute, Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, MRAG Americas, the University of British Colombia’s Sea Around Us Initiative, and regional expert, Dr. Alexander Tewfik.
These leading experts in fisheries management produced the independent stock assessment reconstruction. The BFP data show a rapid decline of commercial fish species in Belize. Of note, the two major commercially exported marine products – conch and lobster – are drastically in the red.
The Belize Fisheries Department has, however, persistently refuted the findings of this independent body of respected experts.
Pathology of Resource Use
Belize operated as an open-access fishery until 2015. As far back as 2005, a study entitled, “Lobster and Conch Fisheries of Belize: a History of Sequential Exploitation” found that the introduction of fossil fuel-powered vessels and the fishing cooperative business model to the industry could result in improved short-term social conditions of fishers but “obscure signs of resource depletion.”
Proper management was recommended to protect the resource.
More fishermen and boats were on the sea in 2005, catching less fish according to the study. It found that heavy reliance on high catches would persist regardless of environmental impact, as the fisheries management regime leans towards managing the resource for optimal production from the environment, rather than protection.
This is described as a “pathology of natural resource use.” This omen, heralded as far back as 2005, is today’s reality for the Belizean fisher folk.
Times have changed
“Basically, the fisherfolk are left to manage themselves,” Fairweather said. “If you have a bad fisherman doing bad things, it will affect the stock; if you have a good fisherman doing good things, it will also affect the stock. But to me, the big elephant in the room is that we have been fishing the same way for the last 50 to 60 years,” Fairweather explained.
Fairweather still dives for lobster as he did during his youth, but the changing conditions under the water have impacted his ability to continue this livelihood – the only one he knows and loves.
He opined that the old practice in the lobster fishery of using hook sticks is one of the main contributors to the depleting stocks.
Ismael Usher has worked in the southern waters of Belize for all his life. He shared that this year was one of the worst he’s ever seen.
“Lobster mi slow, like really slow. It was one rush at the start of the season, but the younger divers are working the sea out of season,” he said.
For Usher, this is the major issue facing the industry. He shared that while he worked to repair and deploy additional lobster traps, the out-of-season fishing made that effort a wasted investment.
The lack of, and need for better management of the marine space and fisheries is a recurring theme highlighted by generations of fisherfolk.
Road to FOIA
The BFP conducted a series of workshops with fisherfolk following the publication of its data on the state of the fisheries in Belize. Dr. Daniel Pauly is the Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Initiative at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. He sits on the Board of Oceana and is widely considered the most cited and leading fisheries expert worldwide.
Photo of Dr. Daniel Pauly, Principal Investigator of the Sea Around Us Initiative
He led the team that conducted the stock assessment reconstruction which shows the dire state of the commercial fish stocks in Belize.
“We have applied what are now standard methods for assessment to the data that are available from Belize, especially to the catch, or export data for conch and lobsters,” Dr. Pauly shared.
“And the message is clear,” he added. “This resource, especially lobster and conch, is going down.”
According to the report from the BDP, during workshop sessions, fishers highlighted a host of illegal and unsustainable practices they have observed.
“These include the catch and sale of undersized and out-of-season products, the catch of berried female lobsters, the smashing of undersize conch shells, and more,” the report states.
A total of 107 fishers attended at least one of the two workshops held in June and December 2023, respectively.
“These fishers come from Belize City (specifically the Vernon Street, North Front Street, and Yabra areas), Caledonia, Chunox Village, Copper Bank Village, Corozal, Dangriga, Georgetown, Hopkins Village, Independence, Monkey River, Placencia, Punta Gorda, Punta Negra, Riversdale Village, San Estevan, Sarteneja Village, and Seine Bight communities,” the report states.
“We presented this result to the fishers in two instances – in the beginning of 2023 and mid-2023 – and the fishers were halfway skeptical because they haven’t had good experiences with outside interest,” Dr. Pauly explained.
He shared that Belize has been used as a playground for researchers who at times failed to provide feedback on their findings to the country.
“So, I can understand the fishers who had doubts. We went in the centre, the south, and the north of the country; and the message was, yes, we have problems with the fisheries; but who are you?” Dr. Pauly said.
They conducted a second round of workshops in association with members of the Belize Federation of Fishers (BFF) and fisherfolk from across the country.
“The reception was completely different – it was, ‘we are in trouble’,” Dr. Pauly explained.
He believes climate impact from heatwaves during the summer and latter part of 2023 wiped out juvenile fish recruits, exacerbating the impacts already brought on by overfishing.
The Sea Around Us project manager, Dr. Maria ‘Deng’ Palomares, with Belizean fishers. Photo by the Belize Fisheries Project.
In July 2023, the BFF called on the Fisheries Department to implement measures to address unsustainable fishing. The BFF relied on the findings from the BFP and firsthand accounts from fisherfolk present at the workshops.
The Fisheries Department issued a release responding to the BFF’s call citing its “disappointment” with the BFF, “for issuing irresponsible and baseless comments on the state of the fishing industry in Belize.”
The department then turned to the work of the Summit Foundation, the organization that brought the fisheries experts together to create the Belize Fisheries Project.
“It is evident,” the department’s release stated, “as expressed in their (BFF’s) press release, that the current statements are founded on the work done by the Summit Foundation which has not been validated nor endorsed by the Government of Belize,” the July 17, 2023, release stated.
The acting Fisheries Administrator, Rigoberto Quintana referred to the findings as “highly questionably” at the time. This was the Fisheries Department’s first open denial of the data showing the crisis state of the major commercial stocks.
In February 2024, following the publication of an article again highlighting the findings of the Belize Fisheries Project, the Ministry of Blue Economy and Civil Aviation issued a release refuting the data once more.
The release stated, “Over the past 30 years, scientific data (fishery-dependent and independent) have confirmed the long-term sustainability of Belize’s shallow water fisheries. Recent stock assessments have confirmed high and consistent annual recruitment rates into the fisheries, well-defined population structures, and sustained catch levels over time series, which are performance indicators that demonstrate the viability of the fishery’s resources.”
A number of requests were issued to the Fisheries Department via email and phone calls to produce the “recent stock assessments data” referred to in its release. These requests received no response.
On June 3, 2024, a Freedom of Information Act Request was lodged to the Fisheries Department by four Belizean journalists and the Chairman of the BFF.
Following the expiration of the two-week response deadline – the acting Fisheries Administrator, Rigoberto Quintana replied insisting on three months to produce the data requested.
It must be noted that this decision of the acting Fisheries Administrator departs from the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. Answering the initial request within the latter part of the 21 days and taking the 3 months to deliver is effectively a delay tactic that departs from the purpose of the FOIA statute – which mandates the delivery of requested information within a timely manner.
The Office of the Ombudsman, the oversight body responsible for ensuring these requests are properly complied with, failed to clarify this grey area within the law upon numerous requests and interestingly became soundless at one point in the process.
The Fisheries Department failed to meet its three-month deadline – delivering of the data about 2 weeks later.
After months of turnaround, on October 4, the department finally delivered 23 PDFs purporting to point to the requested data. The department did not provide the requested data on stock assessments it claimed to have.
No Fisheries Data Available
During the three months before the delivery of the documents, representatives from the Fisheries Department presented its narrative of a healthy and sustainable fisheries stock publicly on numerous occasions. On August 6, Kenneth Esquivel, a Fisheries Officer, claimed on national television that population structures for conch have remained the same since 2003.
“Every year we do this assessment of the population. We have been conducting this assessment since 2003 annually. We have data since 2003, and we can now determine the population structure, and through the different years and historical data has shown that these population structures have not changed,” Esquivel said.
Dr. Deng Palomares is an expert in Fisheries and Fish Biology, and the Senior Scientist and Project Manager at Sea Around Us.
“I read these and was looking for stock assessment methods. There is none. All that is presented are catch graphs that show increases in the catch,” Dr. Deng Palomares said. “The conch data is old, and even the 2017 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report used old conch data,” Dr. Palomares shared.
She outlined that none of the reports provided any evaluation of the stock that is left in the water or methodology.
“Increasing catches does not mean a stable population. Catches increased because there were more fishers. That is the relationship that is shown by those graphs,” she expressed.
Of note, these graphs were not delivered as a part of the set of files sent through the Freedom of Information Act request; instead, they were sent to one of the journalists individually.
Esquivel, during his interview on OYE, admitted that the department still uses a methodology created by a regional scientist in 1996.
“Especially for conch, what we do, since beginning in 2003. We had a regional scientist in 1996, which was Richard Appledoorn; he suggested a methodology for us, and we have since followed that methodology,” Esquivel said.
A Critical Notice From Dr. Appledoorn
Dr. Richard Appledoorn served as a professor of Fish Biology and Coral Reef Studies at the University of Puerto Rico for 30 years. In 1996, he co-authored a study entitled Stock Abundance and Potential Yield of the Queen Conch Resource in Belize in association with the CARICOM Fisheries Resource Assessment and Management Program and the Belize Fisheries Department.
Dr. Appledoorn, in a statement responding to the question of his work in Belize, outlines, “If BZ fisheries is still using my approach, the assumption of equilibrium is clearly not valid, so the results will be invalid as well. Further, in my experience, there is no one in BF with any expertise in statistics, random sampling, or analysis, so I would question anything they report that relies on these. That they are still using the same methodology from 30 years ago attests to this.”
These days, Dr. Appledoorn is working as a member of the Queen Conch Science and Statists Technical Advisory Committee, which advises the Queen Conch Working Group. This regional management initiative is jointly organized by the Caribbean Fisheries Management Council and the UN FAO. He is currently drafting the criteria for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) non-detrimental findings guidance for queen conch.
He shared that the methodology used by Sea Around Us, the CMSY++ or Catch (base) Maximum Sustainable Yield is “one of the most up-to-date methods.” Older equilibrium models like those from the 1990s use fixed rules to keep the fish population steady by allowing a set number of fish to be caught each year. In contrast, CMSY++ adjusts the number of fish that can be caught based on the current health and size of the fish population, ensuring it remains healthy and can continue to grow.
“The Sea Around Us analysis is very up to date, both in data considered and methods used,” he shared.
“If this is really the most recent information (which I strongly doubt), they would be thinking that things were OK. But they really need to be open to these new and other recent assessments, and from what I have heard from others, they are not too keen on listening. They also have been reluctant to share recent data and assessments (e.g., queen conch is supposed to be surveyed every couple of years). They have not reported conch landing to FAO in five years,” Dr. Appledoorn pointed out.
Concluding his statement, he shared, “All of the above suggests that BF does not fully appreciate the good science that is being done for their benefit by a variety of NGOs operating there. Maybe they are thinking their data says everything is OK, but there is cause to consider their assessment of the situation to be insufficient.”
Dr. Appledoorn added, “At any rate, these are questions that could easily be settled if BZ would share their more recent information so that a consensus could be reached.”
His full statement is annexed to this article.
No New Data
During the interview with Dr. Pauly before receiving the files from the Fisheries Department, he opined that there was no new data available outside what was gathered by the Belize Fisheries Project to conduct its reconstruction.
“Everything that has numbers attached to them we have used. We have considered everything that is published in report literature, so any data they have, if they do, is unpublished, unanalyzed; its stuff that has not been scrutinized by anybody,” Dr. Pauly said.
He believes the information sent by the government is simply a trope to not accept the results of the reconstruction done by the BFP.
“In science, when you have different data sets converging to the same thing, it is very difficult for another data to emerge out of nowhere that contradicts,” Dr. Pauly said.
He shared that when the project introduced that data to the Government of Belize, the response they received from top fisheries officials was startling.
“I should perhaps add that when we went with the project to the government, we made a presentation to the government, and we were told by a [top fisheries official] that at any time they could find somebody who would say the opposite of our findings. In other words, our standpoint is one, and they could get other people who say the opposite,” Dr. Pauly said.
Centralize Control and Suppression of Dissent
Minutes from the Fisheries Council Meeting in August 2023, provided under the FOIA request, highlight a position taken by fisheries managers to practice centralized control and suppression of dissent in its communication to the public on matters concerning the fisheries.
CEO Kennedy Carrilo, in that meeting, said she believed the Summit Foundation “intends to show a negative picture to justify the need to mobilize resources, as a few NGOs tend to do.”
“The government has done everything needed to clarify the report due to misconception. However, they must act now to create a scientific mechanism that can advise the Ministry/Department and be the voice at the national level,” CEO Carillo said.
She noted that the government cannot, “close the door to a future alliance with this organization (Summit Foundation) …but the Belize Fisheries Department is the National body responsible for any such report.”
During that meeting, the Fisheries Council agreed to create a working group to review the findings of the Belize Fisheries Project and “work with the department in advising the Ministry in the right direction.”
The CEO of the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute, Chantelle Clarke-Samuels asked during that meeting, “if there is a plan to use the outcome from the review committee for damage control to counter what they (Belize Fisheries Project) have presumed regarding the supposed collapse of Belize Fisheries.”
Asad Magana, Director of the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE), opined at that meeting that, “if the information of the sources is not validated by the government, no matter what result is obtained, it is not valid. Also, whatever conclusion arrives from such analysis should be void.” He further questions “what data the scientific working group will be validating, because if it will be assessing the same data from the Summit Foundation, then it still won’t be valid.”
We reached out to Quintana, and CEO Clarke-Samuels for an update on the progress of the scientific working group, but have received no reply thus far. We also asked Quintana about the current stance of the Fisheries Department concerning the work of the Belize Fisheries Project, but again was not answered.
We noted here, that the Summit Foundation funded the independent research conducted by the Belize Fisheries Project, subsequent workshops, and article grants, inclusive of this one. On its website, the organization states its purpose is to, “support the Government of Belize in its work to develop sustainable fisheries as a part of its growing Blue Economy.”
GOB has however outrightly denied and decried this support, despite being mandated by legislation to use the best possible data and information in managing the fisheries.
For Dr. Pauly, who has been working in Belize and with the government through Oceana for decades, this dismissive and combative approach of the government is reflective of the political supermajority the current administration holds.
He has had two periods of involvement in Belize before the work with the Belize Fisheries Project.
Through Oceana, he was involved in the phase-out of bottom trawling in Belize, and later during the campaign and people’s referendum that resulted in the ban on offshore drilling on the reef for oil.
“At the time I had a very good impression of Belize as a whole,” he said. “Of its government responding, and being conscious, I had a good impression. Now, they have the situations that the fisheries are not doing well, and the political context is different, because the government has an incredible supermajority, and this is bad for people’s health, ” Dr. Pauly expressed.
Precautionary Approach Sidelined
The Fisheries Council is responsible for drafting fisheries management plans. Section 7 of the Belize Fisheries Resource Act mandates that management decisions should be “based on the best information available, and designed to maintain and restore stock at levels capable of producing the maximum amount of stock that can be removed from the fishery without making it overfished in the future.”
Fisheries management should be guided by the best possible scientific data, but in its absence and in the case of uncertainty, should “aim at avoiding irreversible damage and high costs to the resources” by implementing management measures.
The UN Fish Stock Agreement (1995) states, “absence of adequate scientific information shall not be used as a reason for postponing or failing to take conservation and management measures.”
This section orders that the “precautionary approach” be applied to the management of fisheries resources. According to the FAO, this approach, “aims at avoiding irreversible damage and high costs to the resources (and society) in cases of high uncertainty (edging on ignorance).”
“The precautionary approach shall be applied widely to the conservation and management of the fishery resource in order to protect the resources and to preserve the aquatic ecosystems in which they exist,” Section 7 of the Belize Fisheries Resource Act states.
The FAO defines this approach as one which, “exercises prudent foresight to avoid unacceptable or undesirable situations, taking into account that changes in fisheries systems are only slowly reversible, difficult to control, not well understood, and subject to change in the environment and human values.”
“In particular,” the FAO definition states, “Data are needed to determine whether precautionary decision rules are being violated.”
“A precautionary approach to monitoring will use many and various sources of information, including environmental and socio-economic data,” the FAO states.
Section 7 of the Belize Fisheries Resource Act states, “data on fisheries, including information relating to the ecosystems, social, and economic systems in which fisheries occur, shall be collected, verified, reported, and shared in a timely and appropriate manner.”
The Belize Fisheries Project’s purpose is to provide data to the government to aid in determining the state of the fisheries in Belize. Fisheries Council, however, seems to have chosen to suppress and talk down the findings of the dire state of the fisheries. Findings that question the country’s international reputation as a leader in marine conservation and ecotourism.
Belize’s status as a leader in Marine Conservation is questionable.
Belize is praised internationally as a leader in marine conservation, but that reputation may be increasingly underserved, Dr. Pauly shared. In November 2021, the country signed the largest debt-for-conservation swap deal at the time, the Belize Blue Bond, totaling USD 364 million, or about 25.42% of the Gross Domestic Product of Belize as of the second quarter of 2024 when it stood at $1.432 billion.
“The craziest thing is that Belize has a reputation which I now realize is undeserved. It’s a bit like Canada – a reputation for being green when you’re not. But if it acted on this and used these blue funds and stuff to rectify the situation, it would look good,” Dr. Pauly said.
Dr. Andrew Rosenberg, the President of MRAG America, one of the groups that contributed to the findings of the Belize Fisheries Project, is a seasoned biologist and former Deputy Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“Our scientific work and engagement with fishermen, NGOs, and the government in Belize is intended to support the Blue Economy effort and strengthen the sustainability of Belizean fisheries, your wonderful marine environment, and a Blue Economy,” he shared in an email earlier this year.
Dr. Rosenberg added, “In order to do that, we did our scientific, policy, and community engagement work to provide additional bases for policy action. Sometimes the answers that scientific evidence provides aren’t convenient or easy to hear, but I think we can all agree they are important in order to move forward.”
Still Hope
For Chairman Fairweather, a comprehensive study on how fisherfolk could practice sustainable fishing in Belizean waters is necessary to chart a path forward.
“If we continue to fish the way we have been for the last 50 years, our lobster stock and conch stock will continue to deplete,” he expressed. “We need to do a comprehensive study to show how you can do a sustainable fishery in Belize; the way we do it is not sustainable,” Fairweather said.
Dr. Pauly believes that if the government decides to use some of the funding it receives from the blue economy to subsidize fisherfolk for one or two seasons, it will help tremendously with the recovery of stocks. He fears that if some measure is not taken to protect the abused resource, the country may very well lose it.
“The danger is that you will lose this resource, and they are people who say, if your 3000 – 4000 fishers have no livelihood, what are they gonna do,” Dr. Pauly shared. “I don’t know what the government thinks the fishers are going to do if they cannot earn a living; and it’s so sad because it can be sorted out.”
Fairweather believes the country needs to transition to a live lobster fishery to ensure its sustainability.
“I know that we can have a sustainable fishery in Belize. Primarily when it comes to the lobster fishery, but we have to think about a live lobster fishery if we want to make it sustainable. Because when you kill a lobster at sea, that lobster dies; and if it has eggs, all those eggs die with it; and if you change to a live lobster fishery, you will be able to release all the lobsters that have eggs,” Fairweather explained.
While fisherfolk and scientists can suggest solutions to prevent the fallout of the industry – it is up to the fisheries management authorities to recognize that all stakeholders are in the same boat.
“This story was produced with support from the Earth Journalism Network (EJN).”