Ocean Sentry
Members of the Caye Caulker tourism industry are up in arms tonight following the documentation of a shark slaughtering near the village over the weekend. According to twenty-five-year-old Caye Caulker tour guide James Rosado, on Saturday, February 28, he and his girlfriend were fishing when they came upon the gory sight of a sailboat covered with blood as several men on board cleaned and gutted approximately twenty nurse sharks near Bajo Caye, located northwest of Caye Caulker.
Rosado says he also spotted two speedboats a short distance away which had a seine net between them which had netted several sharks. The tour guide says in all, he counted approximately thirty dead sharks between the boat and the net.
He pulled out his camera to take pictures, but Rosado says he had only taken four shots when one of the men onboard the vessel allegedly told him, “If yu no stap tek me pitcha, I wah kill yu and yu camera!” The fisherman then reportedly put a knife in his mouth and dove into the water in Rosado’s direction.
Rosado says he feared for his life and sped off to get help from the police and fisheries personnel on Caye Caulker. But those efforts were unsuccessful and the entire incident left Rosado frustrated and infuriated.
In response, he has printed his pictures on fliers and is distributing them around the island. He hopes the fliers will generate support for a ban on the commercial fishing of nurse sharks in the area.
Rosado has been working as a tour guide for the last seven years and his tours include taking tourists to snorkel and dive at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and at the Shark and Ray Alleys off San Pedro and Caye Caulker.
He believes what he refers to as “a dramatic decline” in the number of sharks visible within the protected areas over the last year can be attributed to overfishing. The tour guide says since Saturday’s incident, he has seen some of the fishermen from the boat selling shark fillets to residents and restaurateurs on Caye Caulker.
Rosado says, “If this is allowed to continue, it will ruin the tourism industry…soon if you come to Caye Caulker to see a shark, you might have to go to a restaurant, not to sea”.
It is not illegal to catch and kill any number of sharks, as no species living in Belizean waters are listed as “endangered.”
The sharks found off Caye Caulker and San Pedro are generally nurse sharks, considered to be docile creatures. In fact, tourists flock to the marine protected areas off the islands to get up close and personal pictures with the sharks. Outside the reef, bigger sharks, with much bigger teeth, patrol the waters.
According to Fisheries Administrator Beverly Wade, the Fisheries Advisory Board will be meeting later this month to consider draft legislation which will include restrictions and special licenses for shark fisheries to eliminate any possibility of the unsustainable fishing of sharks, especially during mating periods when the animals are most vulnerable.
(From amandala.com.bz, Caye Caulker, Belize)
