A crazy law which will bring Belize into disrepute with visitors

Dear Sir,

A crazy law which will bring Belize into disrepute with visitors
As if we don’t have enough to contend with, what with the visitor drop-off resulting from the world financial crisis, resort owners having their hands full with very high air fares into Belize, rising hotel running costs, very expensive phone and communication costs, taxation, some of the highest electricity costs in the Caribbean, high price of fuel etc., we now have a new attack on our visitors – The Sport Fishing License.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has managed to produce the dumbest piece of legislation yet. The new law (Statutory Instrument 115) which came into effect on September 14th last year, requires anyone on a boat equipped for or engaged in Sport Fishing, to have a Sport Fishing License. The key word here is equipped. This means that everyone on the boat must have a Sport Fishing License, not just the fisherman on the boat, but everyone on the boat.  So that includes non-fishing wives, children, babes in arms, your dear old granny, and even the tour guide or boat captain and deckhands!

The penalty for failure to have a Sport Fishing license is $500, or 6 months in prison, or both.

But the madness does not end there. There is also a provision (Clause 8 para. 2) that anyone fishing (by implication not just in a boat) for species designated as “Sport Fish” by the Fisheries Administrator also require a Sport Fishing License.  And guess what?  Amazingly, neither Permit, Bonefish nor Tarpon are on that list (which is appended to Statutory Instrument 114, also of September 14th 2009).  So, if you go out on a boat to fish for these species, you need a Sport Fishing License (because you are on a boat equipped for fishing) but if you are NOT in a boat, i.e. wading from the shore, you don’t (because they are not designated Sport Fishing species)!

Incredibly, the requirement for a Sport Fishing License also applies to fishing from the shore or from a dock although providing you claim to be fishing for barracuda, snapper, yellow tail, you can escape the need for a Sport Fishing License as these species are not on the designated list either!

I have checked with Coastal Zone Management Authority which has confirmed to me in writing that the law is to be applied “as it is “. The Authority has further confirmed that the reason for requiring all persons on a boat to have Sport Fishing Licenses is “to make enforcement easy”.

Personally I cannot wait to see Coastal Zone trying to enforce this in our rural fishing communities. Revolution does not cover it. The cost of an annual license is $100, and with the law as it is, everyone from small children to grandfathers will need a license.  Whole families are going to be hit by this.  Imagine a family with four young children and an elderly grandparent who like to have fun fishing together with a handline on a Sunday afternoon.  As the law stands they would be required to each pay $100 license fee per year – $500 for one little family group.

You might think that handlines are not Sport Fishing tackle, but neither Statutory Instrument 114 or 115  make this distinction.   There is no definition of what constitutes Sport Fishing tackle in the law as it stands.

Sadly our Tourism Association and the Belize Tourist Board have kept quiet about this.  Well, Coastal Zone Management Authority says they are about to start enforcing this new law, so the BTB and BTIA better get ready for a storm of complaints, not only from resort owners who have to explain this law to their guests, but from tourists who will rightly feel they are being ripped off to say nothing of the complaints from hard working Belizeans caught by this legislation.

To insist that every man, woman and child on a boat carrying a fishing rod must have a fishing license is as ludicrous.  What will be next?  That every passenger on a busy must hold a driver’s license?

Whatever have things come to, that such laughably stupid, inaccurate, ignorant and incomplete legislation gets onto our Statute book?  Is ANYBODY in the Ministry of Agriculture who approved this law actually listening to their own Fisheries Department’s complaints against this legislation?

Yours Sincerely

Chris Harris

Steppingstones Resort

Monkey River

Toledo

| | | | | |