THE Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) says a deafening silence has greeted concerns it raised to Agriculture Minister Derrick Kellier over the granting of two research licences to two commercial fishing companies.

The JET documented its concerns in a November 12, 2015 letter to Kellier after media reported last September that a boat owned by one of the companies was detained in the Pedro Bank area by the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard.

At the time, the media reported that seven Jamaican men on the boat were charged by the marine police with breaches of the Fisheries Act.

According to the marine police, six of the men were charged with fishing without identification and fishing without licences, while the chief mate was arrested for aiding and abetting the breaches.

“The vessel was detained by us over the weekend and I am now in the process of releasing the vessel, on the instructions of the Fisheries Division. The catch will be kept in bond and detained by Customs until investigations are complete,” The Gleaner quoted Commander Antonette Wemyss-Gorman.

She was also reported as saying that the boat had an exploratory fishing licence to conduct lobster fishing and a licence to harvest conch.

In its letter to Kellier, the JET said it found out that the boat “was operating under a special licence granted by the Fisheries Division to, inter alia, carry out research into the feasibility of conducting a casita lobster fishery on the Pedro Bank”.

The environmental watchdog said that since it was not aware that commercial fishing operators are necessarily qualified to carry out research, it requested copies of the licences, contracts or memoranda of understanding under the Access to Information Act.

The agriculture ministry responded by providing JET with two identical letters dated August 5, 2014, addressed to both companies. The ministry also provided JET with a copy of the Exploratory Live Spiny Lobster (ELSL) licence for one of the companies and said that the other company did not collect its licence, therefore, a licence was never issued to it.

The Jamaica Observer was unable to contact Kellier for a response as calls to his mobile phone went to voice mail and his message box was full.

The newspaper was also unable to contact the company that received the ELSL licence.

In its letter, JET requested information on the scientists contracted by the fishing company to carry out research on a lobster casita fishery.

The Trust also asked for the specifications determined by the Fisheries Division for all persons participating in the feasibility study.

Noting that the letter to the company stated that information shall be collected and recorded in accordance with the Fisheries Division’s specifications, JET said, given that a year had passed since the letter was issued, it would like copies of “the information that should have been collected and recorded, including the ELSL vessel data forms referred to in the licence”.

In response to the letter’s granting of authority to the companies to keep and dispose, as they see fit, all specimens of spiny lobsters collected during the assessment period, JET said there was nothing in the document to prevent the companies from selling the lobsters they assess.

“These letters appear to be essentially virtually unrestricted fishing licence”… and “contain no terms of reference for the research and no requirements for presentation of the data,” JET pointed out to Kellier.

The Trust also noted that the ELSL licence had an expiry date of March 31, 2015. It asked whether a new licence was issued and argued that, if the answer to that question was no, then the company whose boat was detained was operating without a licence in September 2015 in breach of the law.

According to JET, the licence also allows the use of SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) or Hookah gear, which “is normally strictly prohibited for commercial lobster fishers in Jamaican waters”.

Added JET: “The ELSL licence requires GPS records of each deployed casita — we would like copies of these records. We are aware that there are exemptions under the Access to Information Act for commercially sensitive information, but as these licences purport to cover research and not commercial activity, there should be no difficulty with providing this information.”

The Trust said it was not clear why this research was necessary as a simple Google search will provide several scientific studies on the use of casitas in different countries.

Casitas (Spanish for little houses) are made of concrete or wood and look like tables with stumpy legs. They are placed on the ocean floor and provide protective habitat for the lobsters to hide.

They are not traditional traps, as the lobsters enter and leave them at will. However, because lobsters crave shelter during the day they are attracted to them. That allows harvesters to catch the crustaceans.

But while casitas make life easy for lobster harvesters, the artificial habitats can contribute to damage to seagrass beds and areas that fish and other marine life need to survive.

In its letter JET made the point that casitas “must be supported by robust monitoring and enforcement, which Jamaica emphatically does not have”.

The Trust also requested a copy of an investigation into the issuance of the licences which, it said, was promised by then permanent secretary in the ministry Donovan Stanberry.

In addition, it requested a copy of the annual assessment and evaluation on the research that was required by the Fisheries Division.