The Tribune

By CHUCK PINDER

I congratulate our fine men and women of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) for the capture of yet another Dominican poaching vessel.

This vessel was apprehended last week on the Southern Bahama Bank with - once again - a large quantity of seafood aboard.

It is with heartfelt thanks from the fishermen of Spanish Wells that we say thank you for your dedicated service in protecting the marine resources of our nation.

At a time in the off-season when Crawfish are spawning and reproducing - which is a vital part of our $80 million a year industry - there is no doubt that there are spawny Crawfish within their catch. Along with this, coming from a country that as no laws protecting their marine resources and have already fished out their own waters, there is without a doubt a sizeable amount of undersized crawfish in with the other seafood that they caught.

These men and women of the RBDF have risked endangering their own lives to protect our country from these poachers and for this we are so grateful. The fishermen of the Bahamas will now be watching the Government to see the outcome of this arrest.

If you read the article in The Tribune of October 28, 2014, on Dominican poachers by Minister V Alfred Gray you will want to wonder why we are having this problem. The Defence Force officers have done their job and have done it well and it is now up to the Government to act on behalf of Bahamian fishermen to see that these Dominican poachers are brought before the courts and Justice be served.

It is also our wish that this vessel be cleaned of all of its fuel and oil, carried out somewhere on our banks or offshore of our islands and sunk for three reasons:

1) to add to another multi million dollar industry - diving - in our beautiful waters for our tourist dive boats to use.

2) send a message back to the Dominican Republic or any other country that comes to poach our waters that this is what will happen if caught.

3) it will stop corrupt officials or friends of corrupt officials from buying these vessels cheap at auction and putting Dominican divers aboard them with fake spousal permits to fish our waters with the same people that are killing our marine resources now.

It is time for us to get serious. There is too much under the table ‘huga muga’ going on.

There are vessels in our country now carrying as many as 18 Dominican divers aboard. On three vessels alone that I know of that is nearly 50. Some of them lay at Potter’s Cay Dock and appear notbe touched by Immigration or Marine Resources. Why? As long as we have foreign divers on Bahamian fishing vessels it will make it harder for our RBDF officers to do their job.

Why you think they here? It is because of communication between the ones on the Bahamian vessels and the poaching vessels. It is because we have opened the corrupt door of allowing Dominicans with fake spousal permits to be aboard our Bahamian boats.

That is for one reason on Referendum Day on the foreign male spousal issue why I will be voting no.

Just imagine how many will be here fishing if that passes. We have got enough problems now as it is. It is time Bahamas for us to stop playing games with our marine resources: don’t think we can’t lose them. We have poachers coming into our country now, raping our banks as far as 500 miles away from their home and why? Because they have killed their country’s waters and are now here to do the same thing to ours.

And just think our Government, both by the way in the past and at present they have given out permits to Dominicans and others to be on Bahamian fishing vessels in mass numbers. It has been said ‘arrive today, fake marriage tomorrow, on the boat the next day’.

We have cried out to the Government on many occasions to clean up this mess that is destroying our country’s marine resources.

Once again to the Government, as I write this honouring the fine men and women of the RBDF, I say these poachers are literally killing our marine resources of our country. Please, for sake of our nation’s marine resources and for thousands of Bahamian jobs all over this country - fishermen, processing plants, truck drivers, marine mechanics, refrigeration mechanics, electrical engineers, export companies and many others - that this $80 million a year fishing industry encompasses, we are asking you to guard our heritage because once it is going, it will without a doubt change our country and our way of life for a long time to come.

And because of this added help we need with efforts to combat poaching we are wondering why the Government has not joined the United Nations in their effort to combat Illegal fishing worldwide.

Bahamas, it is time we stop playing games within our fishing industry and start taking this matter very seriously. This is organised crime we are dealing with and we will only end up like the Dominican Republic and then it will be too late.

This latest vessel capture is just one of many. If we all work together for the good of our nation it truly will be ‘Better in the Bahamas.

• Chuck Pinder is a representative of the Spanish Wells Fishermen’s Association.