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You already heard from the president of the San Pedro Fisher Association on this legislation and today we spoke to the president of the Caye Caulker association. Here's what he told us.

Ian Forte, President of Caye Caulker Fishers Association
"A couple weeks back we learned via news that fisheries gave us an ultimatum either we install a VMS tracker on our boats especially those guys that do stone crab fishing which is a special license and if we chose not to install this VMS tracker we would lose our license. So most of the fishers we have on Caye caulker that do stone crab fishing are part of our association so we held a small meeting to hear the concerns and what questions or what they thought about it mostly the fishers all of the fishers we met with that evening did not want this tracker to be on the boat they feel that they were not properly consulted about it, they don't know what data would be collected from it and if you really think about it what data can be collected from it? Just where you go and which area you fish and stuff like that and a lot of fishermen are very very secretive about the area where they set their traps and how they set their traps. I am a fisherman myself and where I set my traps and my shed, no one knows but me because I am very protective about that so to have a tracker on your boat that is showing exactly where you go that will be monitored by someone else raises a lot of concerns for the fishers you know."

"We want the fisheries to come and sit and discuss with us, we want to be at the table, we want to discuss, we want to be able to work together to chart a way forward that it can be beneficial to both parties for the department and for the fishers. We do not like to be given and ultimatum about our livelihood we do not want that, that is not the way it is suppose to be as Belizeans how can you give us an ultimatum about our livelihood."