1. What is the goal of the project?
The project seeks to inform and provide technical support for a transition to ecologically sustainable and economically productive fisheries in Belize. Belize provides a great opportunity for healthy, and resilient recreational and small-scale commercial fisheries. This project aims to share the best publicly available information on Belize’s fisheries, apply best-practice technical analyses of key fishery resources and current fisheries management in Belize, and disseminate the results widely to enable informed discussion and decision-making by stakeholders in Belize.
2. Why is the project happening now?
New scientific analyses of publicly available data from government and UN statistics and published scientific reports and papers covering many years show that many of Belize’s fisheries are presently unsustainable, threatening fisher livelihoods and the health and resilience of Belize’s reefs and associated ecosystems. Meetings with large groups of Belizean fishers also clearly expressed concern over the state of the resources and their livelihoods. This strongly indicates that change is needed soon to prevent further declines, rebuild stocks, and transition fisheries to sustainability. Concurrently, initiatives underway in Belize, including those associated with the Blue Bond, the Belize Sustainable Ocean Plan, and the Project Finance for Permanence (Resilient Bold Belize), offer opportunities to support a transition to sustainability, including transitional support for fishing communities.
3. What are the project’s key findings?
17 of 20 species taken in Belize’s commercial and recreational fisheries, including conch and lobster, are currently both overfished and subject to overfishing. For these species, that means that the fishing pressure on these stocks is too high and the biomass of these animals remaining in the water is too low to sustain a strong fishery and the communities that depend upon fishing. Without adjustments to management, these resources will continue to decline and may collapse completely. The most serious situation is with lobster, which the scientific analyses show has declined steeply and is currently at low levels of abundance. Strong protection for the remaining stock of lobsters and of other depleted resources is urgently needed. However, the good news is that the analysis has also projected that recovery of conch and lobster can occur relatively quickly, within a few years, if appropriate management actions are taken.
4. Can the fisheries be made to be sustainable?
Yes. Experience from around the world demonstrates that resources can be rebuilt and managed sustainably, if the right actions are taken soon. But the amount of fishing, both legal and illegal, must be reduced. Many different types of management measures are available, including establishing more fish replenishment areas (‘no-take’ areas), extending closed seasons, and increasing minimum sizes. The key will be to find the right combination for Belize and its fishers, and a transition plan to support fishing communities during the period of fisheries rebuilding, when catches will be lower.
5. Who conducted the stock assessment?
The stock assessment was conducted by the team at The Sea Around Us, a UBC research initiative that focuses on the reconstruction of fisheries catches of all maritime countries of the world to estimate the total extractions of exploited marine resources by all fishing sectors. SAU has conducted 1,300 stock assessments worldwide, using methodology applied for all the maritime countries of the world. SAU is led by Dr. Daniel Pauly, who is the Principal Investigator, and Dr. Maria (Deng) Palomares, who is the Senior Scientist and Research Unit Project Manager. Dr. Pauly is the author or co-author of more than 1,000 publications. He is also the recipient of numerous international awards, including the 2023 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, described at the “Nobel Prize for the Environment.”
6. What data were used in the stock assessment?
The stock assessment methodology begins with catch reconstructions, which in turn begin with catch data reported by the Government of Belize to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Such reports were made from 1950 to 2016, which is the last year Belize reported catch to the FAO. Over 2016 – 2019, the FAO estimated Belize’s catch, and SAU used export data for conch and lobsters, and recent case studies based on market research to adjust the FAO estimated catches. The stocks are assessed using these reconstructed catches that estimate the total extractions of marine resources from the waters of Belize. Many other kinds of data, including other information on fish catches, on the abundance and sizes of animals in the water, the biology of the animals, are then used to improve the quality of the assessments. As new data become available, they are used to refine the assessments. Independent lines of evidence (including in-water surveys, independent research on fish catches, and fishers’ reports) are examined to test concordance with the SAU assessments. All of the data used in the analyses, as well as all of the methods used, are fully available to the government and to the public.
7. What if the catch data are unreliable?
All catch data, and indeed all data, have some measure of unreliability. A central element of science is estimating and accounting for shortcomings in data. For this analysis, more than 40 scientific reports were available, and the analysis was informed by decades of data collected in Belize. Indeed, more data are available in Belize than in many nations around the world. Additionally, our findings have been checked against, and confirmed by, independent studies, as well as fishers’ accounts.
8. How certain are the assessments?
The assessments have been cross-checked with several independent sources of data, including independent studies of fish catches in Belize (including one paper in which over 18,000 fish were measured) and of trends in the abundance and sizes of animals in the water. Additionally, more than 100 fishers in the south, center, and north of the country have been presented with the assessments and overwhelmingly confirmed our results. An analysis of Belize’s fisheries management shows that, while a strong fisheries law is in place that could lead to a sustainable fishery, the current implementation of management measures is insufficient to control fishing pressure and to allow the stocks to rebuild from their currently depleted level. Simply put, reproduction and growth in most of the main stocks is not keeping up with the mortality caused by fishing. All of these lines of data point to the same conclusion: most of Belize’s fisheries are unsustainable, including commercial fisheries for conch and lobster and many recreational fisheries.
9. What if more data become available?
The project team has searched extensively for publicly available data, examining more than 400 published scientific papers and reports. The team’s findings have been cross-checked and validated through comparison with independent data and fishers’ perspectives and experiences on the water and over time. The team nonetheless welcomes additional data, but we note that further delay in taking management to halt overfishing and rebuild stocks will make recovery more difficult.
10. Are any of Belize’s fisheries sustainable?
Belize is a renowned destination for a specialized type of recreational fishing called flats fishing. This focuses on catch-and-release fishing in shallow waters, often in seagrass flats, for bonefish, permit, tarpon, and snook. Available information indicates this fishery is both sustainable and highly economically productive.
11. How is the project working with the government?
Project team members have conducted outreach to and met with members of several entities within the Government of Belize, including the Fisheries Department and the Ministry of the Blue Economy and Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Economic Development, and the Ministry of Tourism. The team will continue to seek to partner with the Government, sharing all data and analytical methods, and offering training in the assessment methodology, inclusion of additional data in the analysis, and in-depth technical discussions of the current state of the fisheries and identification and analysis of potential solutions.
12. How is the project working with fishers?
The project team has been conducting outreach to fishery cooperatives and fishing associations in Belize, and partnering with the Belize Federation of Fishers (BFF) to meet with fishers, learn from their experience, and explore potential solutions. To date, with the help of the BFF, the project team has met with more than 100 fishermen and fisherwomen, including in all-day workshops conducted in the northern, central, and southern regions of Belize.
13. What are the project’s next steps?
The team will continue to refine its assessments and assess potential solutions and pathways for transitioning Belize’s fisheries to sustainability. A central focus of our work will be continuing and building our conversations with Belize’s fishers, seeking to identify the management changes and transition mechanisms that are most workable for them. The team will also continue sharing all its information and findings publicly, meeting with all who have an interest in transitioning Belize’s fisheries to sustainability, and seeking to partner with government to support the development of ecologically sustainable and economically productive commercial and recreational fisheries in Belize.
If you have a question that was not answered here, please reach out to BelizeFisheriesProject@eli.org.