Minister of Fisheries in Antigua is hooked and can't get away.

Yes that's right. He's like a big mouth grouper who's bitten off more than he can chew. The hidden circle hook is riveted solidly in the side of his jaw and he's slowly being reeled in.  He's changing his colours but the camouflage won't help him. He's regurgitating the bait, but the hook is set. He's looking for rocks to hide behind, but there are none big enough. He's shaking his head in protest, but the line is taught and he's coming around. There is no escape now Brother B, you are coming up and have to concede that you are no longer in control.

Hilson Baptiste, Minister of Agriculture and responsible (astonishingly) for The Environment Division and Fisheries was in parliament bad talking me trying to suggest that because my dad, the lawyer, represents illegal French fishermen, I'm a hypocrite for calling on better environmental protection and trying to get the Fisheries regulations signed. In addition, he tried to make it sound like he's the one who has been pushing for the regulations to be passed. The reality is that we, the people, forced him to sign this thing and despite him doing everything he could to bury it, the regulations are starting him in the face once again and he must sign them. For years the finished regulations languished on his desk while he gazed into his solitaire playing computer doing nothing to help our severely depleted fishery. Year after year they remained unsigned despite all the work from the Fisheries Department and consultations with stakeholders that went into getting them to that stage. Each time someone asked him for a reason why he wasn't signing them he gave some lame excuse or the other. The Chief Fisheries officer was quoted time and time again as saying that her hands were tied on fisheries issues until the regulations were signed by the Minister. The Environmental Awarenss Group, The Fishermens Cooperative, The Sport Fishing Association, Fisheries, the press, and many individuals like myself asked for him to sign them and he ignored us all. The regulations did two things that frightened him. The first is that they actually gave slightly more control to the highly educated, knowledgeable people who have spent their careers day in and day out running the Fisheries Division. These people who know better than any other civil servant what is going on out on the water have had no say on what goes on out there up until now. The Minister who once told me after I invited him to come and see some of our reefs for himself: "Me cant swim so what the hell am I going to do out on a boat..." is the one who makes the key decisions in the Fisheries Department. Decisions that often are polar opposite to what his own officers have recommended. Take for example the Cabinet decision which called for Fisheries officers and other authorities to stop enforcing the laws which pertain to spear fishing. It is illegal to spear fish in Antigua without a permit from the Chief Fisheries Officer. Brother B went to Cabinet and lied to his Cabinet members telling them that his officers said that people should be permitted to spear fish. This information came to me from fisheries officers and from one of the Ministers who was in Cabinet. Imagine a Minister convincing other Cabinet Members to issue an order which would see that officers charged with upholding the law permit these laws to be broken. 
The second reason that he hadn't signed the regulations which he himself has been quoted as saying is that he didn't want anyone telling him to sign anything. He wasn't going to be pushed to do anything. It's something these elected officials seem to forget time and time again.. We elected you and you work for us!!!
In March or 2012 when the general public was up in arms about the huge investment being made by Chinese businessmen to target lobster in our waters, I started an education campaign which attempted to show just how broken our fisheries policy and current regulations were. IT wasn't the fault of Chinese, or of Dominicans, or of French fishers. It was the fault of the Minister responsible for Fisheries who permitted a free for all type of policy to carry on. It was and still is the wild west out there and lawlessness prevails. Once again calls were made to sign the completed fisheries regulations. Together with my fellow board members of The Antigua Conservation Society, we started a online petition to the PM. It was clear that Brother B would never sign the regulations unless something drastic was done. Thousands signed it and the press loved the idea that people were so interested in seeing the regulations signed. Brother B knew the tide was turning, and to find a way out of the hole he had dug himself into he decided to start from scratch with the regulations. Defering a decision was as good as not making a decision. New regulations would be drafted. This would delay the process and I think he hoped fishers would water down the regs, but after months of working on it the opposite came to be true. Consultations provided stronger regulations. Fishers were tired of the status quoe. They were tired of catching less and going further to do so. The press and general public was all over the issue.

Everyone has been watching and he's now got to sign it. The Fisheries department sent the redrafted regs to the ministry of legal affairs has FINALLY (after nearly three months) said they are good to go. Sooooo to save face after being found on the wrong side of public opinion on this issue, brother b is now suggesting in parliament that he's the champion of the fisheries regulations. He is the savior of the reefs and the fishery. In parliament this week he declared that I made people sign a document "against him" and that he's the one who got the regulations to where they are. He bad talked me saying that I am only and environmentalist when it suits me and all sorts of other things aimed at personally tarnishing my reputation. I don't care what this big mouth grouper thinks of me. I have one thing to say to him as he flips and flops on the slimy deck..... which is what I have been saying from the start....: JUST SIGN THE BLASTED THING ALREADY!  

Online campaign on fisheries matters produces fantastic results.

As many readers of my blogs know, the 2006 Fisheries Act has been sitting languishing with the Minister of Fisheries, waiting for him to sign off on the accompanying regulations. While awaiting this evasive signature, unsustainable fishing methods continue to prevail in our marine environment. The total lack of marine management remains incredibly disappointing. Time and time again highly educated and knowledgeable fisheries officers have been quoted as saying "our hands are tied until we have signed regulations". The call to have these regulations signed has come from far and wide within the community mainly because of the situation we are seeing out on the water, but also because the document in questions and it's regulations were developed after consultations with fishers, their associations, environmental groups and other stakeholders. We were all just waiting for the Fisheries Minister's signature. The Antigua Conservations Society decided that all of these stakeholders had done enough complaining about the situation without getting a result. We had all read enough articles in Caribarena.com and in the Daily Observer about the situation and we had all heard stakeholders on the radio being interviewed. The island was fed up with wrongs not being made right with lobster fishing, with parrot fish netting, with conch fishing, and with all the other types of uncontrolled over fishing. We felt that there was no doubt that we needed to take it all to the next level. Our first step was starting a simple online campaign with change.org which attempted to collect signatures petitioning the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda to get involved. It "went viral" here in Antigua and the media seemed to love the concept and more and more "buzz" only helped the cause. Within a short time we reached 2000 signatures to Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer begging him to get involved in order to save our reefs and marine eco systems.
It wasn't long before we saw results. Minister Hilson Baptiste who is minister of Environment, Minister of Fisheries, Minister of Lands, Housing and Agriculture was interviewed saying that he was doing something about the situation and would in fact sign the Fisheries Act's Regulations, but first he was instructing his Chief Fisheries Officer to organize consultations on the regulations once again. Although there was some disappointment due to the fact that these consultations had happened before, it was action nonetheless. As it turned out, the consultations initiated by the Minister went very well. The Antigua Conservation Society was represented at the meetings by Fran Fuller, who had at one time represented the country and the Minister at climate change conferences around the world while working within the Ministry of Environment. Fran reported that the consultations went very well, and she felt that the Fisheries did a very good job of facilitating this fresh round of talks.
There were several sessions including sessions in Barbuda, and stakeholders from both across both islands offered input which as it turns out only made the regulations stronger. The new contributions from stakeholders only served to confirm that stronger protection measures are indeed needed and welcomed by a wide cross section of the community. Yesterday I spoke with Chief Fisheries officer, Cheryl Appleton, who confirmed what Fran has said about these consultations. She said it was fishermen who called for stronger regulations than the ones which had been sitting unsigned on the Minister's desk, and I got the feeling that she was very enthusiastic about the change that has happened. According to Mrs. Appleton, The Minister is eager to sign off on the new regulations just as he said he would in the recent interview. She says that he will have it all delivered to him by the end of this week. This is fantastic news and goes to show that we can make a difference here on this little island with just a little effort. The Antigua Conservation Society, our supporters, and all the 2300 people who signed the petition in the hope of getting the Fisheries Regulations have all made a difference, and we should be happy that the Minister is moving in the right direction. It looks like step one of our campaign may have been was all that was needed for now. It remains to be seen if the regulations will come into effect as promised and the ACS will remain vigilant, but for now the Minister seems to be doing the right thing and many of us feel good about the momentum that is pushing this important issue forward.

Eli Fuller's response to quotes made by Hilson Baptiste, Fisheries Minister of Antigua.

Today's Daily Observer newspaper had an article today which covered comments made by Fisheries Minister, Hilson Baptise, where he says a number of extremely confusing things relating to our petition to the Prime Minster.

Essentially, I am the spokesperson for the Antigua Conservation Society and have been interviewed by www.caribarena.com and also by The Daily Observer about a petition to Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer that we have started. The petition asks the PM to take action to get the draft Fisheries Regulations signed. They have been languishing on the desk of the Fisheries Minster's desk for five years. These regulations are attached to a Fisheries Act 2004 which was developed with input from fishers and the various stakeholders prior to it going before this government all those years ago. The reason we are petitioning the PM is that the Fisheries Minister can't seem to get the regulations signed for some reason which we can't quite understand.

There has been calls for these regulations to be signed from the various stakeholders here locally for years and there has also been pressure from international groups as well. Why? Well we are currently using the 1983 Fisheries Act to protect our marine resources and those resources have taken and are currently taking a serious beating. There is pressure on every aspect of our marine resources and there are many fishing methods being used out on the reef by commercial fishermen that are totally unsustainable. Many endangered species are being fished out right before our eyes and despite urgent calls from many stakeholders and the technical people within the Fisheries Ministry including the chief Fisheries Officer, nothing happens. The Act is sitting in limbo. For more on the rules and regulations we are using currently and the ones that are still sitting waiting to be signed click here.

Anyway, our petition to the PM has generated huge interest and has gotten many people speaking about it in the media and beyond. We have about 1800 signatures on our petition and we expect to get the remaining 200 to make up our goal of 2000 within a few days. We will keep it going though until we see some results. In the meantime, we expect to deliver the signatures to the PM after we get our 2000 goal.

In today's paper, the confusing statements that Baptiste made are as follows:

1) He says that the petition is a waste of time.

If this is the case, why is he falling over himself now to say that he is going to have it signed all of a sudden?

2) He says that it couldn't have happened before because he has been traveling for the past two weeks.

Two weeks??? What about the past five years? These regulations have been sitting on his desk for ages. This isn't anything new at all.

3) He says that the criticism over the past few months because not enough was done about the terrible state of the marine resources is "politically motivated" and that we have an agenda.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Nothing I have written over the past month on the lack of action on signing off on the Fisheries Regulations has had any hint of politics. The Antigua Conservation's Facebook page and it's petition on change.org has no political undertones or language at all. We do have an agenda though and that is to get the fisheries regulations signed as they are now.

4) Another thing he says is that he is going to get a committee set up to discuss the regulations to make sure that only the best regulations are approved. He goes on to say that he will only approve the regulations which the committee of stakeholders all agree on and are regulations that they can agree to adhere to. “As I speak to you I am putting a committee together to go over the regulations to ensure that everybody agrees and are willing to comply with it,” he said.

How does any of that make sense? There are huge problems with this because as this document clearly demonstrates (click here) there have been consultations with the stakeholders. In fact, there have been many, and there is no need to step backward and revert to more consultations. It was consultations that ended up helping to get the Fisheries Act of 2004 drafted and then the Fisheries regulations drafted also. A committee filled with stakeholders will only cause the Fisheries Act to get buried if not scrapped. A talk shop is not what is needed at this point! What is needed is for the minister to sign on the dotted line. In addition, why would the Minister consider only the "best regulations" which "everyone agrees with and are willing to comply with.."? This would be like asking the bankers on Wall Street to sit on a committee to decide on what regulations should be imposed upon them and telling them that only laws that they agree with and are willing to comply with will be considered. See why this may be a problem?

An edited version of the newspaper story can be found by clicking here. You have to laugh at the comments. Anyway, as you can see, this issue isn't an easy one and there is good reason that we are petitioning the Prime Minister. Please sign the petition and join the ACS on facebook. If the petition doesn't work, we may have to go to plan B and then C. We will get some changes for sure because the future of our marine resources is sitting in the balance.