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Admiral Elton Bennett, Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
"Sometime yesterday morning, the Coast Guard launched an operation from Hunting Caye, all the way from Hunting Caye towards Sarstoon. During that patrol, it's a sovereignty patrol to ensure that we maintain territorial integrity of our sea space, we came across some gillnets near the Corona Reef area, the patrol actually recovered 8 gillnets measuring I think a total of about 600ft. Once we were recovering those gillnets, we spotted what appeared to be Guatemalan fishing vessels in the area. We later saw a vessel from TIDE that was stationed out hunting caye arrived on the scene. So we placed two personnels, two Coast guard protocols onboard the vessel that was operating from tide. In order to cover as much area as we could have to recover those gill nets and to deter any of those illegal fishing folks from coming across into sea spaces, so the two vessels split in order to cover as much ground. The vessel that belonged to TIDE that had two coastguard personnel on board were, they were pursuing, what appeared to be a Guatemalan fishing vessel that was inside Belizean sea space. So while they were recovering these gillnets, this Guatemalan fishing vessel came towards their direction and then eventually sped off and sped away. That TIDE vessel, which was a joint operation between Coast Guard and TIDE pursued the vessel to the extent of our sea spaces and as soon as we reached the limits of our sea spaces that patrol stopped in order to, not to enter into Guatemalan waters. It was at that point the Guatemalan vessel reportedly fired two shots apparently in the not directly at the coast Guard patrol, not within a range that would be able to directly impact our vessel. So our vessel did not pursue that Guatemalan vessel any further."

Courtney Menzies:
"Are you concerned that these persons may return or that other vessels may have the same idea?"

Admiral Elton Bennett, Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
"They will, there's a reason why the Coast Guard patrols that area. There's a reason why TIDE is interested in that area as well. So will they return? Of course they will. Will the Guatemalan Navy come by at some point? Yes they will. But we have a responsibility to ensure that we patrol our sea spaces and we will come across these illegal vessels in our sea spaces and we will have to address those."

And according to the executive director at TIDE, Leonardo Chavarria Jr, it's not unusual to find gill nets and illegal fishers in that area around this time of year. But he said it's likely that they will have to increase the safety of their rangers. He spoke to us via Zoom.

Leonardo Chavarria Jr., Executive Director, TIDE
"What happened is that this area of Cayman Crown Reef is a hot spot for this type of activity. It involves a lot of illegal fishing and the use of illegal fishing gear especially around this time which we know is the fish spawning aggregation season, which begins in December and runs all through to June every year. So this is the time when these species are reproducing and they capitalize on this by setting these gill nets and these illicit destructive fishing gears so we ramp up our patrols also and hence the reason why during this time we normally encounter this type of activity. This has happened before but it has not, well from the time TIDE has assumed co-management, it has not reached to the point where shots have been fired like this so it shows that it is a dangerous situation as these gill nets could run anywhere from $800 and above for one gill net so yesterday we pulled up 9 gill nets and more were still left in the water and we had to return today to remove more gill nets that were in that area."

"Certainly we probably at some point will have to consider arming our rangers. In terms of asking for additional Coast Guard personnel I think that the collaboration so far has been exceptional. If we want that, it wouldn't be hard to get that as they have always been really available and ready to conduct patrols basically every time we call."

Bennett says the Coast Guard will continue to support TIDE in its patrols but doesn't see the need to crowd the TIDE vessels with officers.