7 News Belize

Major Out of Season Conch Bust Points to Honduras
posted (July 5, 2019)
Last night we had preliminary details about a major bust of out of season conch in the waters of southern Belize.

Tonight we can confirm that on Wednesday, two men - Belizean fishers - were caught Southeast of Channel Caye - which is near Placencia. They had 874 conch - stuffed in sacks. Now, the conch season closed at the end of April, so this is all very illegal.

Yesterday, they were hauled to Independence Magistrate's Court and one of the fishermen, Bartolo Jimenez pleaded guilty and was fined $500 dollars and slapped with an additional penalty of $17,480 dollars, which breaks down to $20 dollars per conch.

The magistrate also ordered that their vessel, engine and fishing gears all be forfeited to the Government of Belize.

From the intelligence and enforcement perspective, it's a big win for the fisheries department - but on the sustainable fisheries side, it's indicative of a big problem: emptying out Belizean waters to sell conch to Honduras.

Hampton Gamboa from the enforcement section discussed it as a press briefing today:..

Hampton Gamboa, Spvsr., Enforcement, Fisheries Dept.
"2 gentleman pr 2 doreys were harvesting or basically fishing. They observed fishermen throwing stuff in the water. Officers went in the immediate area and retrieve a bag of what appears to be conch. Upon further checking of their main vessel, a skiff that they were fishing from, officers found a large amount of conch on the vessel. Conch season is closed in Belize until September 30th. When officers concluded their check of the total quantity of conch, it amounted to 874 individual conch that was found with these 2 individual in their possessions. These 2 are known fishermen."

"Yesterday in the court in Independence, in the afternoon yesterday, both persons were taken before the court whereby one person, Mr. Bartolo Jimenez pleaded guilty to the offense. He was then charged and fined, he was fined five hundred dollars and then the court made a decision to penalize him at twenty dollars for each individual conch totalling seventeen thousand, four hundred and eighty dollars in fines and penalties."

"These individuals who were arrested, I must say, are also a part of that clique or that connection that's doing the cross-border illegal activities, so yes it was a prestige incident yesterday when the magistrate rule for confiscation of everything and it was the first offense of this kind of nature for these individuals, but prior to that we have record that Mr. Bartolo was charged for possession a couple of years ago or thereabouts. So it's his second numerous offence with the department. We were much more appreciative that these measures were taken by the magistrate to confiscate and seize everything."

Reporter
"If the physical appearance of it gives you the suggestion that in fact it's not for the local market."

Hampton Gamboa
"Well about a large quantity of this product that was confiscated was just conch that was removed from the shell, which is referred to as unprocessed conch, so normally conch in Belize, the average Belizean will not purchase unprocessed conch. So therefore, it is suggested because our neighbouring countries, particularly Honduras and Guatemala, they do purchase conchs that are just removed from the shell in the unprocessed state and since they had prior to what they were found with also in their doreys and in the vessel this type of state, it just predicts or informs us that its clearly something that they probably take across the border rather than bring to mainland Belize for purchasing."

Reporter
"We hear so much about these Guatemalan fishers, Honduran fishers encroaching on Belizean waters and illegally harvesting our product, how much of a factor is that and should we bend our heads in awful sorrow knowing that its actually Belizeans who are selling us out, in this case."

Hampton Gamboa
"These people are Belizeans, but they do have cross-border ties. Whether some of them are fortunate that they are Belizeans, because their parents; maybe their father one case and maybe their mother in one case is from there. So therefore they do have ties to those countries."

Gamboa says there are two or three groups of fishers who export illegally to Honduras and Guatemala.

Notably, Belize is the only Central American country at present that is allowed to export conch because we have been effectively managing our conch population - extracting according to quota.

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