Southern fisher-folk reject Jamaican fisheries encroachment
Posted: 11/12/2009 - 10:23 AM
Author: Adele Ramos - adelescribe@gmail.com
At a meeting held Wednesday evening, the chorus was sounded that the men and women who fish the southern waters of Belize for their livelihood—and who have been doing so since they were children—do not welcome the encroachment of Jamaican fishing vessels and traps into Belize’s already deteriorating marine fisheries.
The sighting of several Jamaican vessels, equipped with scores of traps, in the waters of southern Belize over the weekend spawned a wave of protests over the media and the Internet from fisher folk and conservationists alike, who particularly fear the Jamaicans because of their notoriety for having depleted their own fish stocks.
A local cooperative, the Rio Grande Fisheries Cooperative, teamed up with P.G. Fisheries Company Limited (a company registered locally by Jamaicans for the joint venture) in an agreement dating back to September.
The 15-year joint venture agreement and business plan, which we have had a chance to review, call for a BZ$1.5 million initial investment, including BZ$600,000 for boats and BZ$40,000 for fishing gear, commencing with a 51-foot trawler and three other boats, as well as 10 Jamaican fishermen as trainers.
Fifty-one percent of the profits from the venture would be allotted to the local coop, while 49% would go to the Jamaican company, whose principals have been identified as Owen Knight, Ainsley Foulkes, and Derek Osbourne, all of Jamaica.
A vocal group of local fishermen and women reject the project, however, on the basis that it presents a danger to already stressed fisheries of the south. Nonetheless, the Jamaican vessels (and scores of fish traps) remain visible right off Punta Gorda’s coastline.
Their introduction to Belizean waters was the cause for contention at the community meeting organized by the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) at the Father Ring Parish Hall in Punta Gorda Wednesday evening. That’s where we caught up with those who articulated their concerns, directed, for the most part, at the government.
“I paddle and go fishing for my wellbeing and it bothers me,” said Louis Valencio, a fisherman of Punta Gorda.
“In addition to the Hondurans and the Guatemalans, now we have a Jamaican invasion,” added Valencio, who claims he is the founder of the coop that signed on to the venture, but only learned of the agreement two days ago. “Those people in authority don’t understand the invasion that is going on. We cannot be tolerant, or one day this will get out of control.”
For so many people in the south, fishing is their way of life, providing a vital dimension of their customary diet.
“At least if you have your fish, you don’t destroy everything, you have your little banana, your little plantain, your little cassava, you could make your sere, your boil up and you eat. But if you carry everything, destroy everything, you can’t eat,” said Olga Faux, 56, a fisher lady of Riversdale in the Placencia area. “So I appeal to those who can do something, let them do it. I plea for that!”
In speaking with Amandala at the meeting venue, Senior Fisheries Officer, George Myvett, said that while he and the Fisheries Department knew about the joint venture agreement between the local cooperative and the Jamaican investors, they did not anticipate that fishing vessels and traps would be introduced into Belizean waters.
Myvett said that while a joint venture agreement exists, the proper procedure is for the Fisheries Advisory Board (FAB) to meet and then indicate to the Minister responsible for fisheries, in this case, Rene Montero, what position should be taken on the matter.
The issue was slated for today’s FAB meeting; however, even in advance of that meeting, Prime Minister Dean Barrow went on record this morning, on the KREM WUB Morning Vibes, to say, “It ain’t going to happen.”
Barrow said, “Government has approved no such agreement and will approve no such agreement.”
The issue was tabled at FAB hours later, and a press release, we are told, is pending.
Since the weekend, there has been vocal objection over the introduction of Jamaican boats and traps, as well as workers, into southern Belize. Today, five boats were seen a stone’s throw away, at the dock of the cooperative. Sources also say at least one other Jamaican vessel is docked further north, in the Placencia area. Amandala could not find any official on site to speak with us when we visited the coop, located on Front Street, Punta Gorda.
Calling it a continuation of an age-old journey to keep resources preserved for future generations, facilitator of Wednesday evening’s meeting, Dr. Joseph Palacio, a social anthropologist and a local of Barranco, a Garifuna fishing village in Toledo, underscored what the fisher folk had told us in our interviews: “We want the resources to remain for the benefit of our children and their children and their children.”
The Fisheries Department, as the government agency tasked with managing the country’s fishery resources, has been taking a lot of heat over the agreement, because one of its own, coxswain, Victor Vasquez, of the Punta Gorda branch, witnessed the agreement, suggesting the department’s favor on a deal that has raised the ire of many locals.
Key to the issues raised at today’s meeting was the lack of size and catch limits for species that the joint venture would target – long-established fisheries management tools that had been invoked in other territories to help stave off or curb over-fishing.
George Myvett, the Senior Fisheries Officer, assured our newspaper that no fishing license had been granted to the Jamaicans.
Some parts of the agreement, said Myvett, concerned him and do not align with what he peculiarly described as his department’s “unwritten” policies.
Myvett said he had not spoken with Vasquez about the document, nor had he seen the signed agreement—which, we note, has been widely circulated on the Internet and in local environmental circles. Myvett also said that he had learnt of Cabinet’s intervention to stop the Jamaican fishers on Friday.
Inside the public meeting, he defended Vasquez, the coxswain who signed the agreement, saying, “…unequivocally… Mr. Vasquez has done nothing wrong.”
Myvett furthermore claimed that there is nothing unusual about a joint venture agreement, pointing to prior agreements dating back to the 90’s, between Hondurans and a Belizean cooperative to trawl Belize’s waters for shrimp.
He did say, though, that the department would want to see any new venture tap the deep water resources, and not species within the reef system. Joint ventures that bring technology and capital are favorable, he added.
Myvett also indicated that the proposal for Jamaicans, coming from a country where fisheries have been depleted, to train locals in fishing techniques, is also a major concern.
“We in Belize, as a part of CARICOM, have been involved with articulating a common fisheries policy for the region and a part of the scripting of that policy sort of brought in its wake similar concerns from nationals, that traditional fisheries ought to be reserved for nationals. So the response from Belizeans is not unprecedented,” said Myvett.
TIDE executive director, Celia Mahung, told Amandala that one of the main reasons for the meeting is that fishermen wanted more information on the venture, and that’s why they invited the reps from the coop to attend.
Specifically, officials of the Rio Grande Coop were invited to give a presentation to explain the project to the public; however, they did not show up, even though the organizer, TIDE, had been told a representative would, our sources say.
Neither was there anyone representing the Cooperatives Department, which also witnessed the joint venture agreement, and fixed its official stamp on the document.
“We wanted people to have all the necessary info to make informed decisions about resolutions they wanted to take,” said Mahung. “All weekend after the boats came, people came asking for the meeting.”
Roughly 150 people, not all of them fishermen, attended, some from several miles north of the venue.
Olga Faux, the fisher lady of Riversdale, said it looks like the male fishers in her area, about 20 of them, “ketch deh cow,” and stayed away from the meeting, so the ladies came out to present their views.
Faux said that she had been fishing since she was 11, and she does not approve of the use of traps because, as much as she has tried to release juveniles caught in them, they often perish, so she has relinquished the use of traps and continues to preach the sustainability gospel to fellow fishers.
She told us that on top of the problems they face with illegal fishing by nationals of neighboring countries, since the earthquake in May, there are places where they are no longer able to find fish where they were once common.
Derwin Weatherburne of Monkey River, who said he has been fishing since he was 15, and for the past 22 years, said they have always had a problem with people from neighboring countries raping the fishery resources of Belize.
“If Jamaicans were coming to purchase fish it would be OK, but if they are working their equipments, that’s another story,” he told us. “Our resources will be depleted in a short time if we allow this to happen.”
The fishermen and women we spoke with said they want the Government to listen to them and not allow this threat to the sustainability of Belize’s fisheries.
“If we give them an open access to fish our waters like this, then we will have a major problem from other countries coming and wanting to have the same option, and I think pretty soon southern Belize will have no product left,” one concerned fisherperson said.
Daniel Castellanos, another fisherman of Monkey River, said also that they are already battling with the impact of encroachers from neighboring countries for some time.
“We want those in power to reject their petition to fish in our waters,” Castellanos said.
“I heard the Jamaicans were coming, but they did not tell us they had signed the agreement,” said Louis Valencia, a fisherman of Punta Gorda and a steward of TIDE’s community steward program, indicating that he was alarmed to hear about the Jamaican fishing vessels “running around” in Belizean waters.
“This document was not presented to people here in PG,” he said, “It says that there are 50 members in the coop. I am sure that what is happening here is that these 50 members that they are talking about are the Guatemalans that reside in Sarstoon and they themselves have already invaded Belize for its marine resources.”
Valencia said that when he contacted the Fisheries Department, they informed him that neither the vessels nor the Jamaicans were licensed to fish.
The Jamaicans will bring more sophisticated equipment, such as fish finders, causing the local fisheries to crash, Faux also said.
At the PG meeting, organizers also circulated a petition for locals to register their position on the project.
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