THE deprivation caused to the Jamaican economy as a result of illegal fishing by people from other countries may not improve any time soon, one industry official has suggested.

Anthony Drysdale, business development and liaison officer of the Fishermen’s Cooperative Union Limited, believes that it will be a hard nut to crack as resources to properly patrol and monitor territorial waters are lacking.

Drysdale spoke to the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday after a Honduran vessel with 132 men on-board was intercepted by the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Coast Guard three days before.

The vessel was seized and the men detained for fishing illegally on the Pedro Banks.

The coast guard issued a statement on December 12 saying that when the Honduran vessel was approached, it manoeuvred aggressively to avoid interdiction. The mission caused significant damage to the JDF Coast Guard vessel.

The statement also pointed out that similar encounters have been a long-standing issue and that it is not uncommon for people on-board these vessels who are fishing illegally to resist apprehension in ways that put JDF service members at risk.

Drysdale confirmed that this was the case.

“You find that a boat comes in and you seize that boat and they get another boat and come back. The coast guards don’t have the resources to deal with all of that. Those boats sometimes carry guns because people come with the intention to secure a certain amount and take back to their country. It is not a bed of roses,” he said.

Drysdale added that Jamaica’s territorial waters possess some of the best lobster and conch in the world, and therefore attract outsiders who care very little about breaking laws.

“Lobster is very tasty. People from Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia and other countries come and try to seize theses species and try to make headway,” Drysdale said.

Attempting to show that Government sees illegal fishing as a threat to the economy, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries recently launched a collaborative campaign dubbed Blue Justice.

The collaboration includes the National Fisheries Authority, the Passport Immigration and Citizenship Agency, Jamaica Constabulary Force, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, the Maritime Authority, and the Port Authority of Jamaica. Through the partnership the Government will target organised crime in the fishing sector and focus on deterring and/or eliminating illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.

Gavin Bellamy, chief executive officer at the National Fisheries Authority, said that it is difficult to monitor Jamaica’s waters for poachers but he was particularly pleased about the multi-agency collaboration because there is a serious organised crime element involved.

“There is organised crime associated with illegal fishing. We lose customs and export revenue — it is just exponential. It balloons out when you think about the impact that just one vessel has. We have had sightings regularly and the coast guard has been working with us at sea to eliminate this,” Bellamy told the Sunday Observer.

“Our exclusive economic zone is about 24 times bigger than our land so it is a very large area for the coast guard to patrol. We do our best to try to ensure that when we catch them, they get the full brunt of the law. Pedro Bank is a nice fishing area [so] definitely they are going to come here and pillage, but poaching is extremely dangerous to our economy, ecology and our society on a whole,” Bellamy said, adding that poachers harvest juveniles and female lobsters with eggs, known as berried lobsters.

“From the calculations we have done it works out that if you allow one berried lobster to go through its life cycle, with eggs and everything, that would be valued at over US$50,000 in a three- to four-year period,” he said.

“This is serious economic loss for Jamaica. Also, it makes it harder for our fishers to catch what they go out there for; it makes their work harder [as] they use more gasoline to catch the same amount. The poachers don’t discriminate, they catch everything. It is really a big economic, social and environmental cost,” Bellamy said.

He told the Sunday Observer that the fines associated with illegal fishing are “not very high” but under the new Fisheries Act of 2018 fines have increased and the ability to secure forfeiture of vessels involved in the activity has been made a reality.

“We can make applications to the court that they don’t get back the vessel, and the Government of Jamaica would own the vessel,” he said.