The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzi@tribunemedia.net

The  Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources yesterday said his ministry accepts the election results from last month’s Bahamas Fly Fishing Industry Association (BFFIA) annual general meeting, even though some industry stakeholders are threatening to mount a legal action over the outcome.    

    V. Alfred Gray, who chaired a final industry consultation on Monday over the proposed changes to the Fisheries Resources (Jurisdiction and Conservation) Act and accompanying relations, told Tribune Business yesterday that BFFIA appears to represent about 400 members of the Bahamian fly fishing community.

Yet the Abaco Fly Fishing Guide Association, together with some guides from Grand Bahama and elsewhere, are refusing to recognise the BFFIA as the industry’s governing body following its controversial - and hotly disputed - annual general meeting (AGM) last month.

Cindy Pinder, vice-president of the Abaco Fly Fishing Guide Association, told Tribune Business on Monday that it was “not right” for BFFIA to determine how fishing guides would behave when many in the industry no longer recognised it as the sector’s voice.

  Mr Gray said: “My understanding is, as promulgated by this Abaco Association that I really don’t know much about, that the parent body did not permit certain members to vote because the vote did not come during the meeting when it should have come, and came after some of them had to leave to go back to their homes.

“The position as advanced in the meeting we had on Monday was that the people who would have left made up a very small number of people. There were 148 registered members who could have voted, and out of that number 127 voted in favor of the elected officials. If 148 registered, and you had to be financially registered in order to vote, it seems to me that that is democratically sufficient to accept the result of the election.”

Mr Gray added: “Until someone can show me that something contrary to that took place, we accept the results of the election.”

    Although hotly disputed by BFFIA president, Prescott Smith, Mrs Pinder and others accused its Board members of stretching out the AGM agenda to delay voting in the director elections until late in the afternoon - a time when many Family Island guides and lodge owners had been forced to leave and head for the airport to catch return flights.

    The main criticisms over the new Act and accompanying regulations are that the consultation period has been too short; the fees and processes for obtaining fishing licences are inflexible and overly bureaucratic; that the ‘red tape’ and extra costs will make the Bahamas uncompetitive and send anglers elsewhere; and that while everyone acknowledges the need to conserve this nation’s natural resources and ensure Bahamians get a ‘fair piece of the economic pie’, the reforms appear too protectionist.

    At the centre of the controversy is the proposed requirement that all visiting fly fishermen, even experts coming to the Bahamas for decades, have to hire a local guide at a cost of $600 per day, along with stricter definitions for foreigner anglers and foreign-owned bone fishing lodges. Tourism stakeholders are especially concerned that the planned changes to the Act and accompanying regulations will create more ‘red tape’ and price the Bahamas out of the market.