Was there a mass slaughter of Nurse Sharks this weekend? – that’s
what one tour guide says and shows in pictures, but the authorities aren’t
so sure. On Saturday, twenty five year old Jaime Rosado, who has been a licensed
tour guide for the past six years, was on his boat just after noon when he was
alerted to what appeared to be a sailing vessel with what he believed to be
a number of dead dolphins onboard.
He decided to venture closer to the vessel and that is when he noticed
that it wasn’t dolphins that the fishermen had killed and started to fillet;
they were nurse sharks: he estimates over a dozen of them all believed to have
been netted overnight. According to Jaime Rosado who spoke to 7News via telephone,
for one year they have been noticing a decline in the numbers of nurse sharks
– which is a main attraction for tourists. But they could not put a finger
on what was causing the noticeable decline; that is until two days ago:
Now it is not illegal to kill nurse sharks whether the fish is in or
out of a reserve area but the concern tonight by many tour guides is that if
this continues it will affect the tourism industry. Before we start with the
pictures, we warn you that they are graphic – so if you’re squeamish,
you may want to turn the channel.
Jaime Rosado, Tour Guide
“I was out fishing at a little island just off Caye Caulker, maybe
about five minutes off Caye Caulker, and it is the area where the nurse sharks
usually go to mate in the shallow water and I saw a sailboat with what appeared
to be, I didn’t know what it was at the time, I thought it was maybe dolphins
first and then I figured it was sharks. And when I got close I noticed they
were nurse sharks. They were at the mating ground and I guess these guys just
went and set their nets around the whole mating ground and just delete everything
from there. They had about thirty mature nurse sharks on their boat and they
were already filleting some and they had a bunch of meat on the boat.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
Who was doing this slaughtering?
Jaime Rosado,
“It was a Corozal vessel known as Janelli and they were maybe about
nine guys on the boat. The boat looked like it was Sartenja, you know the boat
they park right at the Swing Bridge, all of those sailboats that park at the
Swing Bridge, similar to those.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
So they were Belizean fishermen?
Jaime Rosado,
“Belizean fishermen from Corozal. I asked them what they were doing
and they say they were filleting some fish and I tried to explain that we make
our money off that because they come from the reserve, they are only out there
mating and trying to reproduce right now so that maybe they can go back to the
reserve after a while.
They usually sit in it for a couple hours in the early morning and then
they pick it up sometime again, maybe three or four hours in the early morning
in a certain area and then they fill it up early the next day and then they
start to clean their product. These pictures were taken at about maybe a little
bit after 12 the afternoon and they were just cleaning their products. So I
figure they maybe pull out their nets at about 8:30 to 9 in the morning.
It has been going on for a while now because recently when we’re
diving and snorkelling at the reef by the reserve we are not seeing any sharks
an at all and we’ve been wondering where are all the sharks going, maybe
they moved out because people are harassing them or maybe they are just in a
different area or something. So when I saw this happening I had to take some
pictures to actually show people where all the sharks are going because if that
is boat taking 40 sharks per night, what about the rest of boats that we don’t
know about and how long have they been doing it. How many nights, how many weeks,
how many months have they been doing it and killing so many sharks every night.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
I spoke with a tour guide and he said that in just two nights he believe that
over 25 nurse sharks were slaughtered.
Jaime Rosado,
“Easy, easy, easy. I’ll figure 25 is a small figure compared
to what they are slaughtering out there for two nights because this is one night’s
catch I saw them with and I figure they had thirty in the boat on one night’s
catch, on one boat. But what we wanted is to maybe put them on the illegal list
because I mean the sharks are at the reserve but yeah they are not caged in
and they swim out from the reserve, they go to the shallow waters underneath
the land to mate, to reproduce. But if these guys are raping the sharks when
they are reproducing and killing them out, then what will happen three, five,
six years down the line when there is no sharks. This is how majority of Caye
Caulker and San Pedranos make their livelihood. Then what will become of us?
No tourist will go to the reef because there will be nothing out there. They
will have to stop charging park fees because there will be nothing at the reef
to see. So we just want them to try to put a law in place or something to get
these sharks on the protected list or have them illegal to fish.”
7News understands that a group is being organized to protect
the nurse shark and if it is possible give it the same status as the whale shark
– which cannot be hunted legally.
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