| IT IS Illegal to take any conch in the Bahamas form now on, unless you are a Bahamian
The locals have complained that the foreigner’s boats have been taking all the conch so they recently passed this into law, the fishing regs have changed big time also. Not that this will change anything as far as the conch population is concerned,
Its the commercial conch boats that are causing most of the harm, they work an area until there are not enough conch to make it worth there wile staying there & then move to the next place and wipe it out.
SOO be careful not to take any as they may take your boat in trade if they find you with conch.
About 10 years ago, I had a regular group charter where we rented 3 houses on the beach in Green Turtle Cay and I would take the folks to the reef every day and teach them scuba diving, after “class” wile there I would free dive & shoot some fish with the pole spear for diner. It’s illegal to spear anything with a spear gun or wile on scuba or hookah, although the locals do it and get away with it.
On my way back in I had my Air -compressor running filing up the tanks as I pulled into the dock to drop off everyone.
Once on the dock I cleaned the fish & threw them overboard, a local saw this and reported me to the police for spearing with scuba gear on.
The police came and took my brand new Bauer Air compressor ($3500) confiscated it!
And I had 10 people onboard that swore I did not use tanks when I shot the fish, they did not want to hear that they just wanted the compressor.
Lucky for me I was connected on that Island as I ran regular charters there renting houses ect, I told the woman whom I rented the houses from that I would not be back renting her house on this island because of what the police had done, By the next morning the police were at my boat apology up one side and down the other saying how they made a big mistake, on & on, please forgive us !
Anyway had I not known someone with some leverage I would have lost the compressor?
And if you look at the Bahamaian Defense force boats - I believe every one of then they got from some one who “broke the law” at some point.
Ram |