By Vanessa James
KINGSTON, Jamaica, (JIS) – The ministry of agriculture, fisheries and mining will be launching a pilot initiative this month to make lobster available for consumption year round, says portfolio minister, Floyd Green, during a recent Post-Sectoral Talk Show and Dialogue at the Sunken Garden in Hope Gardens, St Andrew.
Minister Green noted that the enforcement of stricter regulations on lobster fishing during the closed season by the Ministry and the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) has led to an oversupply of the product.
“So what happens when you have oversupply? Price goes down, you don’t get the return on your investment [and] you have a glut. What keeps happening now is [that there is] lobster being stored from season to season,” he explained.
As a result, the minister announced a trial initiative allowing lobster left over from the open season to be sold during the closed season, which runs locally from April 1 to June 30 each year.
“We have a strategy. If you have lobster at the end of the season, everybody has to declare the lobster. We now have, I think, 300 declarations, so we already know who has lobster. We are saying you will be able to sell the lobster… to ensure that you can have lobster all around the year. It will ultimately benefit the fishers,” Green outlined.
However, he warned fishers that any attempts to bypass the initiative’s criteria would not succeed.
“I’m saying to the fishers, don’t think you have a loophole to go out and fish now and try to put it in. It’s not going to work. Anybody who is buying during this period will have to buy from somebody that we already have on our books as a registered person who has declared that they have lobster,” minister Green emphasized, and that persons selling lobster must be able to verify that they obtained it from a declared provider or face sanctions.Anyone found with undeclared lobster during the closed season could face fines of up to $3 million or a maximum of two years in prison.
Minister Green expressed confidence in the proposal, citing successful implementations of similar allowances in other countries. However, he said the ministry is relying on the NFA and other industry stakeholders to ensure compliance with the law.
