You might be interested in what follows, which has been posted today in a thread in another forum by a resort owner in southern Belize. We should be worried by what he says:-

"I worked with Melanie McField and several others as the vice chairman of the South Water Caye Marine Reserve to have our part of it (the area from Thatch Caye to Tobacco Caye to the third cut down from South Water Caye) to be placed under full protection status. We worked at it for over a year and finally the ministers signed off on it in April after the UNESCO report slammed the Belize government. Now we have total protection status with no fishing of any kind to be allowed within that zone, no cutting of mangroves, and no dredging. But the government is still going to allow the first harvest of lobster here in June and July before requiring trap removal and they still have not put funding together for a buoy demarcation system. Everything is a struggle with our government. And the craziest thing of all is that they still allow complete and open fishing of the snappers while spawning in the only whale shark zone that Belize has at Gladdens Spit. Divers actually have to dodge dangling hooks of fishermen while being ripped through the snappers in a strong current so they can see the whale sharks (which feed on the snapper spawn). It is amazing to see Belizean fishermen who create so few jobs and income for Belize just gleefully loading down their boats with huge snapppers filled with eggs and at least twenty dive boats from all different areas queing up to dive underneath them. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg. And Belize as a whole still sees no problem with this. Until all of the snappers are dead and gone and no more whale sharks come, then they will wake up and say that someone should have done something about it."

And:-
"I personally have had fishermen from Sarteneja come up to me while out at Turneffe and ask me for antibiotics to cure their gonorrhea that they caught every time they would go in after harvesting the lobster. Their wives are left with no money to eat tortillas with salt and a squeeze of lime, their houses ramshackle and falling over, and them blowing thousands of dollars of hard earned lobster money at houses of ill repute, cantinas, and bars. They would also frequently run out of gasoline (36 miles from the mainland) and come begging me for gasoline so that they could get back in to sell their harvest. That pretty much sums up many of the fishermen of Belize although the ones who can plan a week or two in advance often become very rich since Belize has absolutely no limit on the numerical limit one person can harvest of anything. If someone puts in a million traps and can actually keep up with most of them, they enjoy unheard of riches whilst the heritage of Belizes fisheries is wiped out of existence.

I have great sympathy for a fisherman who actually cares about his family and his children and wants to catch adult fish and lobsters in a sustainable fashion, but they are few and far between. And as for what I am doing to educate them, I give them Hell every time I meet with them on the high seas and lecture them about the absolute unsustainability of what they are doing. And if you know Belize at all, you will believe me when I tell you that all of them nod their heads in agreement and that the most common reply of almost every single one I have ever spoken to has been, �but if I dont do it, someone else will�. If I dont take undersized lobster, the next guy right behind me will. If I dont take small conchs and limitless amounts of everything, then the next guy will.

It would be astonishing to me if Belizean fishermen did not collapse their own industry. Indeed, I used to be a fishermen in my life and I saw that it was unsustainable and so I stopped. Belize has lots of work in many other industries and although fishermen are not any dumber than anyone else and should not be accused of being dumber than others, they certainly appear to be quite shortsighted and lacking in any form of responsibility towards the future stocks of fish.

Three fishermen are actually on our committee for our reserve, however, and all three of them welcomed the reserve zoning declaration, because they saw the unsustainability of harvesting limitless catches. They also saw that it is true that the bordering areas of marine reserves actually see an increase in fish quantities and that the marine reserve replenishes bordering areas. It is only common sense that in an outlaw country that laws have to be very unambiguous and very stringent to get enforced at all.

I am a Belizean and I do not carry any other passport except that of Belize. I cannot pack up and leave and I am not a rich foreigner trying to tell people what to do out of arrogance or disrespect. I am calling it like I see it and there is nothing to be gained in supporting continued overfishing of Belizes overburdened reefs. When GM goes bankrupt, people will have to find new jobs and no one feels overly sorry for them. When Belizes reefs go bankrupt, the same will have to happen. Better that it happens before a total and extreme crash and that way Belize can save the whole other portion of its economy which depends on tourism (and especially eco tourism) before it is too late."