Yesterday, we told you how the Coast Guard and the Fisheries Department caught 3 men fishing illegally in an area near Glovers Reef. Well, Fisheries officers were back out on their patrols yesterday, and they came upon a boat which had just over a thousand undersized conch.
Today, the Department's Conservation Compliance Unit's Supervisor told us what drew the officers' attention to this boat:
Hampton Gamboa, Supervisor, Conservation Compliance Unit
"Yesterday morning at about 10:50 thereabout, fisheries officers conducting patrols from Belize City here to Emily, Caye Glory, Long Caye and farther south, came across a sailboat near Alligator Head Caye, south of Belize City and while searching the vessel, a sailboat, they observed a number of parcels of undersized or what appears to be undersized conch. So the officers on the patrol started to do a check of individuals by weighing them and with the first bag that they sorted out, the entire bag was undersized. Hence, officers continued with their inspection of the vessel and came across more parcels and they ended up detaining five fishermen for one thousand, forty individual conch."
Reporter
"Now sir, talk to us about the size of these conchs because it looks like some of them are so juvenile that it seems completely unreasonable to even catch them."
Hampton Gamboa
"Yes sir, on the average almost everyone of them ranges between one point seven and two point four, the entire one thousand and forty. So they're very small conchs. Most of them, at least about eighty percent of them are filleted conchs, as you can see there. The remainder, twenty percent, is market clean conchs, whereby they've been removed from the shell and their guts have been removed. They still have on their skin as normally purchased locally."
Reporter
"Who all are going to be facing charges for this and what exactly?"
Hampton Gamboa
"Well they will be facing charges of possession of undersized conch and the five individuals they have their own quantity that they have to answer to. Some of them are answering to quantities of two hundred and odd each, one hundred and ninety-odd each and so on, right. So that's the charge that will be levied on all five individuals."
We understand that all 5 men have been arraigned at Magistrate's Court, and they've pleaded not guilty. They were released on bail of $1,500.
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