In November 2024, an article in the Amandala titled "Code Red in the Blue" concluded that the very limited data coming out of the Fisheries department regarding fish stocks may be inaccurate due to an outdated method of data collection the department uses. It suggested that fish stocks may be significantly less than what is being reported - and that it is being felt by the fishers.
But while Minister Perez was asked about this information, he dismissed it as certain NGOs attempting to raise a red flag in order to access more funds. Here's what he told the hosts on Sunup on 7.
Andre Perez, Minister of The Blue Economy & Disaster Risk Management
"The blue space is lucrative. When you have NGOs trying to say the blue economy should be an environmental ministry, they're wrong, because the blue economy is not an environmental ministry, it's called blue economy. So it calls for extracting as much as possible from the waters, from the bounties but we do it in a sustainable manner. Once they understand that, we can move forward but once you have NGOs or different groups that engage and push other foreign interest whereby they're accessing funds and to access these funds, they have to say something is wrong here in this country, something is wrong with the fisheries department and their data and refusing to work along and refusing to accept the fisheries department as the official body to provide that data. And when you go and engage in demanding from the fisheries department as per constitution calling it to put the data forward, we have the data available but the Human Resources are very precious but if you want it immediately overnight for you to translate and then you call us that we refuse to share data, that's unfair. So that is where we have to be careful. Many NGOs, great people to work, but when you have specific groups that are there for their personal interest, serving the interest of others, and I call out some members of the media too, I'm not afraid to mince my words on that. When they take them abroad and take them on trips and give them training and offer them some material that they come back and are scared and want to tell the people that we're in danger. We're not running away from that, we have to take care of our waters, if we don't do it right, we can lose our exports for conch and stone crab and fin fish and lobster all of these things, if we don't take care of it and manage it sustainably can move forward to a point where it can become dangerous. I am saying and the fisheries department is saying that we have a healthy population, that the fish stocks that we do, we do it very much in a way that is sustainable, every year the record speaks for itself."
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