Last week, we told you about the Fisheries Pride Campaign at the Fisheries Department has been conducting to ensure that fisher folk are doing business in a sustainable manner.
Well, Oceana Belize, in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Fisheries Department, and the BTB, want to ensure that they are rewarded for their efforts in following the fisheries laws.
Today, they launched a program brand called "Fish Right, Eat Right", and 7News was there to find out exactly what it is. Daniel Ortiz has that story:
Daniel Ortiz reporting
"Fish Right, Eat Right" - it's a new brand that Oceana Belize and its partners are hoping that with time you'll come to associate with high quality sea food which was caught through sustainable fishing practices.
Julie Robinson - Fisheries Lead, The Nature Conservancy
"This is a local brand that we will be promoting over the next 6 months - over the next year and developing with everybody that we see here in the room with the private sector, with the cooperatives, with fisheries and authorities, in order to develop a locally caught sustainable sea food supply chain. It will highlight establishments and fishers that abide by the regulations - that look to source their sea food sustainably."
Daniel Ortiz
"When I see "Fish right, Eat Right" what should I think when I go a restaurant per say?"
Alysa Carnegie - Communications Director, Oceana Belize
"You should think that that sea food has been sustainably caught, meaning using means that its spy catch, looking at a fish that's been sustainably caught that's in accordance with the law that follow seasons. It's not a juvenile, so if it's a snapper it measures up. If it's a mackerel it measures up to that size for the specific species and that it's responsibly source on behalf of the restaurants, of the establishments, of the food service provider."
It's like the Trip Advisor stamp but for restaurant owners and fishermen who want to see the fisheries industry survive fishing pressures, and to see consumers, take a stand against law breakers in the seafood trade.
Alysa Carnegie - Communications Director, Oceana Belize
"You help strengthen our local community. Help create a stable marketplace and help fishermen feel more comfortable in making adjustments to improve the long term sustainability of the fishery for generations to come instead of focusing on short term survival."
What would be the perspective of a fisherman which would cause him to break the fisheries laws to try to make a living?
Chef Sean Kuylen - Professional Culinary Artist
"You see right now north is blowing, fisherman will not go to sea. Gas is expensive. It is cold. I live in the south of the country and the guys go to Glovers Reef. Imagine you at Glovers Reef, you got your container with ice and day 2, you are not catching anything. Day 3, your ice is going down. What will you do? You will start to do things that are maybe not sustainably or practice the right fishing practice. Because that is human nature. I mean you would want to go in the non-fishing zones. You would want to bring back let's say shark or paggie or something. You will sell me snapper, but just because the circumstance is we are just human. Now how do I help? I am a chef and I would encourage all Belizeans to know your fisherman, know your source, because if you trust the person that even know where it came from, then you have that ethically sound person that we know - we will get it from them."
Chef Jennie Staines - Elvi's Kitchen
"I have been brought grey angelfish as snapper. I've been brought tilapia as snook or grouper or barracuda as snook and we've been working and we've been working very hard a few of us in San Pedro. But I am so happy about this, because at Elvi's I try to practice the correct thing. We fish right and we eat right."
And to make sure that it's not only consumers who get a tasty bellyful of healthy sea food, the initiative's partners have incentivized it for the private sector to buy into the brand.
Reporter
"The success of this is dependent on these restaurants, these organizations signing on. How are you guys going to get that to happen?"
Alysa Carnegie - Communications Director, Oceana Belize
"There is a lot of incentives, a lot of great initiatives coming on board for restaurants to sign up. So for example for the Belize Tourism Board to be considered a restaurant of the year and in their tourism awards, you have to be a part of this program. Flavors of Belize magazine which is Belize perhaps premier lifestyle and food publication, we are offered rates to people who are part of this program and so what we tried to do is make it a beneficial and incentivized kind of what you are already doing for signing on to this program."
The conservationists say that this is only the first step in rolling out the Fish Right, Eat Right" brand. There is an education campaign which they will embark on in the near future.
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