And today the association came to the media with a press conference as the first step in saving Sandfly Caye. Courtney Menzies was there and has this story.

The Belize Flats Fishery Association is not giving up its resources without a fight. They held a press conference today sharing their concerns, not just with the development at Cayo Rosario - for which there is currently a stop order - but also for Sandfly Caye.

Much like Will Bauer, Sandfly Caye is one of the flats that the tour guides make their livelihoods. It's where they can take tourists out to catch permit, bonefish and tarpon. But there is development threatening the caye and today tour guides and presidents of various associations skipped a day of making money to stand up against it.

Eworth Garbutt, President, BFFA
"We're reaching a point where everybody, and especially the man up north, I won't call his name, he's putting his country first. It is time for Belize to put the environment, the people and the foreign investor in check in the sense that we want them to make money but I will say this, I've never seen an ecosystem but I've seen finance that has made a lot off our ecosystem. So who has the power? Who has the power?"

"We're here to ask for partnership with the regulatory people, the everyday people, the people who made the decision but if partnership is too big for us to float in even a partner-dory will work at this hour. But we don't want to have to come here, leave our jobs, come to defend something and you hear that it's another set of breeze."

Norman Castillo, President, Commercial Fishing Association
"I have noticed the last fight we did on Will Baur Flats, it was stopped. Now we're seeing a lot more flats are being destroyed so we're going after investors, we are coming after you. That's my main directive of being here today. Fishermen, step up to the plate. You can't stay behind, stay to the front, you're the leaders of these things out there so protect what we have."

Adiel Perez, Bonefish and Tarpon Trust
"The less mangroves, the less seagrass, the less biodiversity there is in coral reef ecosystems. so this means that the livelihoods that depend on these ecosystems would be adversely affected in the long term and with that of course the economies that these ecosystems generate."

"If this rate of destruction and habitat loss continues, we will have an unsustainable model of tourism, of policy development, and of course of conservation and management in the country."

And Garbutt told us what he's heard the plans for Sandfly Caye look like:

Eworth Garbutt, President, BFFA
"And potentially through the grape vine, they're thinking of building a fishing lodge by destroying the thing that the people are are going to fish for. You want game meat but you will kill all the deer and gibnuts so the people could sleep in a nice big comfortable concrete something. Nonsense guys."

But they've got the help of at least one NGO. Oceana Belize's Janelle Chanona explained that it's not that they're anti-development, it's that these stakeholders need to be involved in the process.

And in terms of Cayo Rosario, they've requested a FOIA.

Janelle Chanona, Vice President, Oceana Belize
"I think what is clear is what you're seeing is this resistance to always being the last to know because we will be the first to pay. If we lose those ecosystems, we're the first to pay the consequences of those, so that lack of information of even what's happening and what's proposed is really a trend that we have to break. Part of our support for this movement has been to ask for information about several of these projects but the one that's live right now is the Cayo Rosario proposed development. We have supported the call from the San Pedro community to get more information on that. We've actually now gotten to the point, we wrote a freedom of information act request collectively but now there's a pre-action letter in and June 6th we're supposed to get a response to the data request, to the questions because there's so much we don't know in terms of permitting and due diligence there."

Michael Peranta, Tour Guide
"I'm lucky to say I started guiding 8 years ago so I got to see the beauty and the amount of fish that used to be there. We had a lot of juvenile bonefish that when the weather was windy, we could have gone back with a beginner fly fisher and teach him and build their confidence up to eventually move up to permit which was the main reason we used to go to Rosario. We used to have huge schools of permit, big fish there too that you can't find, you could barely find any spot consistently. But now, I'm just saying it as a story."

And they're not letting that happen to Sandfly Caye so the BFFA have plans for further action. Garbutt says they won't go gentle.

Eworth Garbutt, President, BFFA
"This will be followed up by a strong letter stating what we're demanding and what we're ready to negotiate with. But also I think the only way you do this - you have a little niece or nephew? You promise to take them to ice cream parlor and then you forget? Do they leave you alone if you forgot to take them if you told them Sunday you'll take them out? We have to go back to being a kid, we will nag until we get what we demand, and what the people demand. So this isn't a one time thing or a little breeze that will blow over. I'm the youngest and I think I'm a kid forever and I'll be a kid, nag until they're tired and do the right thing."

Philip Leslie, President, San Pedro Tour Guide Association
"I recall as a young kid, the Four Seasons of Australia want to take Cayo Congrejo and put a dolphin center there and we fought it out and it's not there. So we have to keep doing this but we want to create a role model - I'm getting old, and I don't want to be doing this over and over. And sometimes when I go to places I am happy I can bring others because the government has a tag on me now - oh **obscenity** here comes the anti development guy. And that's not true. I just want to show them that they need to think proper."

We will keep following this story.