Many local fishermen appeared to favour a decision taken by the minister responsible for fisheries to extend the closed period for crawfish as of next season to prevent it from becoming extinct, but there were others who expressed anxieties about what the change would do to their livelihood.
The Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources, Leslie Miller announced the move recently as he bemoaned shrinking fisheries stocks in some parts of The Bahamas due to over fishing and severe weather.
He announced that the open season for crawfish will extend from September to February as of 2007 rather than the current August to March period, extending the closed period for another two months.
“If we donﾒt give the crawfish sufficient time to reproduce, we are not going to have enough crawfish for the next two or three generations,” said Lofton Culmer a fisherman based at Potterﾒs Cay.
One of his colleagues, Pedro Culmer, agreed.
“I think that itﾒs a good idea for them to close the season because in the month of August, crawfish will still be spawning,” he said.
However, not everyone shared their sentiments as others harboured worries about a rather likely decline in profits as a result.
“I donﾒt think that [the government] should do that, because they already closed the grouper season so the man who depends on these things for a living, what is he going to do?” asked Stephen Munroe as he pondered the situation.
As he announced a package of measures aimed at protecting treasured fisheries stocks in the waters of The Bahamas, Minister Miller declared that there is too much pressure being placed on the crawfish ﾖ the most lucrative catch for local fishermen.
“Four months is insufficient time for that species to regroup, regenerate and to enable them to flourish in our waters,” he explained.
The lengthening of the closed season to allow crawfish to reproduce was made as result of pleas from some local fishermen for fisheries officials to adopt the move. Minister Miller had said that the situation had gotten to the point where in some popular congregation sites, crawfish stocks had declined by as much as 50 percent.
The fisheries sector has had its fair share of challenges like the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, the protracted problem of poachers and the exploitation by the occupants of some pleasure cruises. In fact, Minister Miller has announced a plan to reduce the bag limits on fisheries supplies for these types of tourists.
Nonetheless, there were still slivers of hesitancy expressed yesterday as some vendors who profit from the sector struggled to get used to the idea of a longer closed season for crawfish.
As she ran her stall from the Montagu foreshore, Barbra Thompson held an ominous prediction for how the move would affect the sector.
“Thatﾒs all that fishermen really depend on for a living,” she told The Journal. “When the crawfish season closes, everyone respects it but when it is time for it to open everyone is anxious because everyone has their bills to pay.”
Fisheries officials have long been contending with the problems posed for the sector by foreigner who fish in Bahamian waters illegally. Just recently, members of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force arrested a group of approximately 80 poachers from the Dominican Republic who were allegedly caught with a vast undetermined amount of fisheries products on board.
Ralph Murray, captain of the Ms. Darman is familiar with such competition.
“There are Dominican vessels poaching the water, thatﾒs whatﾒs killing the banks in the off seasons,” he said.
“In the southern banks, no one fishes out there anymore because Dominican vessels have been there the entire summer so it doesnﾒt make sense.”
Fisherman Lofton Culmer called for a proper system of monitoring for poachers.
“We have a lot of islands where poachers and tourists come and they reap the benefits of crawfish because these areas are not being policed properly by the Defence Force,” he said.
“I think that they should use their planes and circle around the waters at least once or twice during the week and catch the persons in the act,” he recommended.
By: Kendea Jones, The Bahama Journal
