Tonight five Belize City men are faced with charges of possession of undersized conch. They were caught by officers of the Fisheries Department late this afternoon with eleven hundred and fifty two undersized conch. Also a container was found in the area with two hundred and fifty conch. The men were detained and the conch are now in the possession on the department. We got to see the undersized catch today:..
Michael Sabal -Supervisor, Fisheries Department
"What is happening, due to the increase amount of small seafood products coming in, we have launched a countrywide operation because illegal sea food coming in from the fishermen. So, we have officers at strategic locations and this afternoon we manage to intersect a sailboat as they were delivering at the Northern Fisherman Cooperative, and that's where 5 fishermen were busted with a total of 1,152 undersized conch. Which is to say the individual conch is less than 3 ounces in weight. They should be 3 ounces or more. So there guys were arrested and they will be charged for possession of undersize conch and that is what we are trying to stop, because we are really into conservation and they are messing up the whole industry, the way how they are operating. There were some found property as the officers were coming, some people who didn't want to get busted, they ran away and they left a total of about 250 undersized conch. These guys will be charged. The minimum is $20 per individual conchs. The fines would be like over $25,000 or something like that."
Vivian Ramnarace - Enforcement Coordinator, Fisheries Department
"For the past couple weeks we've been getting tips for a lot of illegal fishing of undersized conch and so from these tips, we've been strategizing how we can tackle this problem and so we've been doing a few changes and well today was the result 2 busts. One is happening right now and found property. Our mandate is to protect and conserve the fishery resources of Belize and so it's sad really because these local fishermen are really hurting themselves in the end, because they are hurting the industry and in years to come they will lose their livelihood because the conch industry will basically crash."
The five fishermen will be charged with possession of undersized conch. And just a reminder, the lobster season in Belize closes at midnight on February 14th which is this coming Saturday.
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