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Posted By: Marty Get fishing licenses online - 04/07/11 11:53 PM
Planning to go Sport Fishing?

Get your Sport Fishing license online at CoastalZoneBelize.org

Or call us at the CZMA at 223-0719/ 5739

From Mary Toy :

If you're going fishing, you need a license. Even if you're going to be in a boat with someone who is fishing, but you're not fishing yourself, you still need a license. Even if you'll be fishing from shore, you need a license. You need a license to catch a fish. Period.

The law is supposed to be in the process of being re-written to eliminate from the licensing requirements fishing from shore, children under a certain age or senior citizens over a certain age, and the requirement that everybody in a boat on which fishing gear is located needs a license. (Right now, the way the law is written if 6 snorkelers go out on a boat and the guide brings along fishing gear to catch fish for lunch, all 6 snorkelers should have a fishing license.)

Even if they eliminate some stupid things in the law, you'll still always need a license for sportfishing, particularly for catch and release.
Posted By: Jon The Baptist Re: Get fishing licenses online - 04/08/11 06:43 AM
How do you get a fishing license for the year?
Posted By: Marty Re: Get fishing licenses online - 04/08/11 03:31 PM
click the link above.....

here's a note from Ray Auxillou about the fishing regulations....

All this kind of thing does is encourage a climate and attitude of crime. You think I, a Caye boy is going to obey the laws about fishing, when I want a few fish to eat? Hardly. Making criminals of people who live on the sea and around it, if they cannot find food is nonsense. You teach criminality in one thing, it carries over to everything else. Which is what we have.
The way to hell is paved with good intentions.

Response from a friend.....

Well, Ray, people here in Placencia, including "caye boys" seem to be obeying the law for the most part.

Catch and release is not nonsense, it's essential to protect a very lucrative sport fishing industry that provides a very good living to many Belizeans - and not just guides, but also people in the hotel, restaurant, transportation, agriculture, communications and other industries.

Nor are fishing licenses or the rewriting of the Fisheries Act nonsense. Our fisheries are being seriously depleted and we have to do something about that or we won't have any fish - just like Jamaica and Japan, and much of the rest of the world.

Our Fisheries Act was originally written in 1948, with one minor revision in 1989. It doesn't address the many complex issues that have arisen in the last 63 years, which, if not addressed, will leave us unable to protect our fisheries. Some of those issues are international ones, such as restrictions on fishing in our economic zone, which stretches 200 miles beyond the Reef, and which is being eyed by many countries as a potential source of food for them, not us. Other issues include straddling stocks (relevant in the Belize/Honduras/Guatemala area), harvesting of marine resources such as sea slugs/cucumbers (which was certainly never thought of 1948), protection of mangroves, seagrass and other marine habitat, etc.

Some people in Belize still have a romantic image of the caye boys in their dories fishing for food for their families and making a little extra money for clothing, housing and education. That was great when life was much simpler and fish were much more plentiful. (I've seen a HUGE drop in fish size and quantity in just the 13 years I've been here.) That romantic image is great if we honor it, but don't try to still live by it. Because if we do, it won't be an image much longer, it - and us - and the Sea - will be ghosts.
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