Conservationists in the Bahamas are pushing back against plans to double Bahamas' seafood exports. Bahamian Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Renward Wells told local media in April he wanted to double Bahamas' fisheries exports to USD 200 million (EUR 171.5 million) from the current figure of around USD 100 million (EUR 86.8 million) annually.

That announcement was at the time welcomed by the Bahamas Commercial Fishers Alliance vice-president Keith

Carroll, who said that the Bahamas “was only scratching the surface of its fisheries potential.”
But Save the Bays Director and Chairman Joseph Darville issued heavy criticism of the move.

“This effort would quickly obliterate much of our marine resources; already our grouper, lobster and conch are seriously
threatened,” Darville told SeafoodSource. “This delicate system is always held in a precarious state of balance; the slightest ill-conceived, heavy-handed move on the part of government could bring it all toppling down.

Darville said while he agreed that species not normally fished in the Bahamas, which exports lobster and conch, could be profitably harvested in larger quantities, “these species, about which they speak, are found in the relatively deep part of our ocean; only those fishermen with large vessels and expensive gear can access them.”

“We are not concerned about the increase in obtaining resources from the ocean; our serious concerns are based upon the methods proposed by the minister,” he said. “Those methods have long been outlawed in the Bahamas, which has resulted in the protection of our endangered species.”

He explained that longline fishing was banned in the Bahamas and seemed to be among the methods being considered for the expanded production.

“The mere mention of several over-fished species was bad enough; the suggestion that Bahamians expand into fishing pelagic species, with the attendant threat of dreaded longline and other mass fishing techniques is a truly terrifying prospect,” Darville told The Bahamas Weekly. “The minister’s comments were as outrageous as they were uninformed.”

Though poachers, mainly from Florida, U.S.A., and the Dominican Republic, continue to put pressure on it, he said, the current state of Bahamas' fisheries was sustainable “as long as we can maintain the present level of fishing our waters, while maintaining the legal closed seasons on a number of species.”

He noted, however, that the conch population continues to decline.