By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Fishermen were “spared” with the passing of Hurricane Erin, and poachers remain top concerns for the industry, says Keith Carroll, the National Fisheries Association’s (NFA) president.

Reporting that boats that have come in thus far have yielded less than satisfactory volumes for the crawfish season, which opened August 1, Mr Carroll, said poachers have been spotted and reported to the Royal Bahamas Defence Force. 

“I could say some of the boats [that] come in, they haven’t done as good as last season, but they still did pretty good,” Mr Carroll said. “They see signs of poaching. They saw some boats out there while they was out there. I know they saw poachers, because we got reports from them where they saw them, and we called the Defence Force, but still nothing happen. I don’t know what to say, but the poaching is still there. It ain’t like how it was, but it’s still there.

“People will come and take their chances. It’s up to us to have, you know, Defence Force out there patrolling. And they have to be there 24/7 because these guys only want a chance to get in. If they can get in and fish [for] couple hours, that’s all they need... They travel couple hundred miles to get here, at least 300. And they’ll stay in the old Bahama channel for days and days, looking for opportunities to come in to fish for couple hours and go back out if they have to. And they do that for months until they get enough fish to go home with. We need the Defence Force to be out there at all times. When one boat leave another one got to be there.”

While Mr Carroll attributes lower crawfish volumes to an uptick in poaching, he told Tribune Business that fisherman were spared from what could have been a disastrous impact from Hurricane Erin which threatened the southeastern Bahamas with tropical storm conditions.

“I hope we can continue, getting past this hurricane season. That’s our biggest concern,” Mr Carroll added. “It was only really threatening the eastern side of islands, mostly on the ocean side. So it didn’t really do nothing to the banks side. So, it didn’t really affect the fishermen that much.”

Mr Carroll said a hurricane can destroy traps used by fisherman, as well as disrupt marine life, resulting in difficulties in catching fish. He argued that the losses fishermen take in the aftermath of a hurricane should be recognized by the government.

“When Hurricane Irma came over The Bahamas, it impacted Inagua and Ragged Island,” Mr Carroll said. “During Hurricane Irma, I lose all the traps I had. I had almost 4,000 traps. I lose every one. Not one trap I had to fish with. Then the guys who had condos from Ragged Island, along the Ragged Island Cays and straight down, all those condos gone. That was thousands of condos. And that’s people traps, and we had to replace them and start all over again. 

“Even the government and the people didn’t realize because they was reporting that The Bahamas has been spared the brunt of the hurricane, but they didn’t know that it affected the fishermen. Majority of fishermen lose just about everything they had when it comes to their traps. I mean, we didn’t lose no boats, but we lose the traps. 

“It’s like you get a store and you don’t have nothing inside it to sell. No inventory. Everything gone. So when the government talk about losses due to storms, once a storm go over any bank, the great Bahama bank, the little Bahama bank, they need to take an assessment from the fishermen and see what the fishermen lost before they put a value on what the country lost.

“You’ll have to wait and you’ll have to rebuild,” he added. “You have to start over. Usually, the guys who could buy the traps back they’ll have to get them back. Sometimes they lose that season. Let’s say for instance, Hurricane Erin were to come over the country, and we were to lose all our traps. We wouldn’t be able to fish again until next season, because you’ll have to get the material, you have to build these straps, and you’ll have to set them back. So you might get couple, you might get one or 200 in the water before the season, but you wouldn’t catch yourself until the next season.”