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In August of 2015, Daniel Ortiz got down and dirty to follow their exploits along with Wil Maheia. Tonight, for context, we repeat that story:…

Daniel Ortiz reporting
While waiting for the BDF change over to return from Cadenas, Maheia and the boat captains took us along the southern shore of the Toledo District, just before the Sarstoon River mouth, waters considered to be clearly in Belizean territory.

It immediately became apparent what they were signaling to a number fishermen believed to be Guatemalans who were illegally fishing in Belizean waters. Now, we're unable to say 100% that they are illegals fishing in Belize, but there were very distinct traits of their behavior while we were there.

For one, every time we attempted to get closer, these fishermen, making use of lightweight dories, immediately headed for the shore and immediately pulled their boats into the mangroves. Then, they ducked for cover and stayed hidden until we gave up and throttled our bigger boats out into deeper waters. Next, they were fishing with nets considered to be illegal in Belize due to the destruction it causes to fishing populations.

We came across yards long of fishing nets set up to capture as much fish as possible. Wil Maheia decided that it made no sense to uproot it, since it would be tedious and detrimental if it got caught in the engines of the boats.

Later on, we came across a group of about 9-12 fishermen, and that's when Maheia decided to demonstrate just how these suspected illegal fishermen behave when Belizean vessels got too close. Our captains throttled pass them a few a times, and they immediately sped toward the shallow waters, and that's when the fishermen made a mad dash for the mangroves, abandoning their boats and crawling on their bellies to get away.

Maheia jumped out of his boat and pursued them on foot to demonstrate what happens. I joined him along with Audrey Matura-Shepherd and Alfredo Ortega. It immediately became clear why the men chose to crawl to their hiding spots. These waters were shallow reaching me to my ankle, but the mud sucks anyone down to all fours, acting something like quicksand. Creep and Crawling, it took us almost half hour to get to the bank of the sea which would have normally taken 5 to 10 minutes if we were wading through the water on solid ground.

Cell phone footage taken by Audrey Matura captures me at a very unflattering angle. But, comical as it was, it demonstrates the difficulty to catch up with these illegal fishers who were already deep in the mangroves hiding from us. It's a bit impractical to go chasing after these suspected illegal fishermen.

Wil Maheia says that the reason it's so rampant is that there is no law enforcement presence to dissuade Guatemalans from taking advantage of the seemingly abandoned territory.

Wil Maheia - Leader, Belize Territorial Volunteers
"It was close to 50 of them hiding in their right now, clusters. See there is a cluster there, and there and there. They can't dispute this. The river is behind me, south of me - Sarstoon River. We are north of Sarstoon. There is no way that we are even close to being into Guatemalan territory. The thing is that we need to protect our natural resources. We need to enforce our laws. If anybody in PG, or any part of Belize set a net like this at any river mouth, they will be arrested. Why is it that the Guatemalans cannot be arrested for these kinds of gill nets? Belizeans get arrested on a daily basis, so why can't the Guatemalans. That's my big fight here."

Audrey Matura-Shepherd - Participant, Return Trip
"Coast guard are they here to enforce these or you don't know?"

Wil Maheia - Leader, Belize Territorial Volunteers
"Well I've never seen them enforcing the law here. The last time I saw the coast guard was in front of Barranco. I've never really seen them south of Barranco as well. Whether they are here or not, I don't know, but I could tell you that I've been coming here for over 20 years and I've never seen Fisheries vessels in this area. I've seen the BDF, but they go straight up the river which worked in our favor today."

Daniel Ortiz
"The BDF, do they stop?"

Wil Maheia - Leader, Belize Territorial Volunteers
"They don't. They go and they see everything here. They passed this every Tuesday or whenever they go up, they see all these illegal fishing, but their job is to go and transfer people and that's what they do. They do not stop and try to stop the Guatemalans. I've never seen them pull up a gill net. I've never seen then stop illegal fishing, I've never seen them intercepted a Guatemalan vessel."

Audrey Matura-Shepherd
"Wil, do you think that if Belizean civilians come out on a regular basis to just traffic this area, there would be less encroachment?"

Wil Maheia
"Oh yes. The whole idea why TIDE got started, this exact same thing use to happen in what is now the Port Honduras Marine Reserve and it as a citizen thing. It wasn't like a government thing. It was a citizen thing that help established that marine reserve. Of course government recognized it and declared it a marine reserve. But it was this kind of citizenry, getting together that made it happen. It was the fishermen of Punta Gorda that made Port Honduras, because at one time, these same people or their relatives were camping in what is now the Port Honduras Marine Reserve."

"I am one hundred percent sure that they are Guatemalans, they live on the Guatemalan side. They wouldn't ran away if they were Belizeans, because they would be able to identify that our boat was not like an enforcement agency boat. Again, it's time for Belizeans to stand up to protect our natural resources. The hundreds and thousands of meters of gill nets that were there - the amount of clusters of Guatemalans in groups of 10-12 that was there on the beach just raping our natural resources, it's time for us as Belizeans to stand up. I call on the government, the Fisheries Department, the Coast Guard to begin to patrol our beaches, our coastline from Sarstoon Island all the way up to Rio Hondo and as you can see this morning was just an ordinary morning and you can see that there was, in my opinion, between 50-100 boats including the boats that was at the mouth of the Sarstoon River that was trapping the jacks."

According to Maheia those widespread violations continue unfettered up to this day - and were seen as recently as two weeks ago.