Antillean design fish trap introduced by Jamaican seafood company
Belize has fish, and the Jamaicans want them. After depleting their own marine life using fishing methods such as dynamite, chemicals, and cages, Jamaicans have turned to this country to feed their people. According to the February issue of the Placencia Citizens for Sustainable Development, a source in the Fisheries Department confirmed that Rainforest Seafood of Jamaica has commissioned local fishermen, mostly from Monkey River, to construct and fish with Antillean cages. The Jamaicans are buying these fish from our fishermen.
According to a source in the Fisheries Department, Antillean cages wiped out the fishing industry in Jamaica, and several months ago, Fisheries Department decided to ban them here in Belize, Fisheries is very unhappy with this activity. Fishermen were instructed to pull up and remove all cages by the end of January.
These cages are larger than the cages used locally, have two entrances (local cages have only one) and are too efficient. At the end of the day, the rate of fish taken out is not sustainable. These cages exhaust our resources by removing not only too many fish, but they also disrupt the ecological balance of the reef. You take out too many grazing fish, you also affect the algae. There is a natural relationship in the sea, and the indiscriminate taking of fish from all spectrum of the Sea is disruptive of this balance. Antillean cages are set in the Sea, whereas Belizean traps are usually set in the sheltered bogue, in a deep mangrove channel.
A significant number of these traps are saturating the waters off Monkey River, Punta Gorda, and Punta Negra. Before Antillean cage fishing, Rainforest Seafood used to export one container of fish per month to Jamaica. Now with these cages, they are exporting two containers per week. Fish production is up tenfold, but this practice of cage fishing is not sustainable. Fish being trapped include snappers, groupers and even reef fish (such as doctor fish) that are not consumed locally.
No one has been arrested, but Fisheries will be monitoring and enforcing our demand for the removal of all these cages from our Sea by end of January. Fishermen who have not complied will be prosecuted.
When asked why the export permit for Rainforest Seafood had not been revoked, our source replied, “It is the local fishermen who are breaking the law, not the Jamaicans.”
Use of Antillean cages in the Caribbean region dates to the early Spanish occupation. The most common cage being used currently is shaped like a Z with two down curving horse-neck entrance funnels. They are dropped to the bottom of the sea, and dragged along. The use of Antillean cages for trapping fish is only the most recent story of Jamaicans making plays for fish in Belize waters.
In December 2009, the Toledo Institute for Development and the Environment (TIDE) sponsored a public meeting in Punta Gorda in response to a joint venture between Rio Grande Fishermen Cooperative (PG) and PG Fisheries Company (Jamaica). That deal would have allowed the Jamaicans to fish in offshore waters by using fish traps to catch 40,000 pounds of fish every month for up to thirty or more years, and export all but 10-15% back to Jamaica.
Because of public controversy, the deal fell apart. However, it seems that Jamaica is still getting what it wants from Belize – fish to satisfy the demand in Jamaica because Jamaica destroyed its own fisheries. And, Jamaica is getting what it wants with the active participation of our own citizens.