In the pink, dawn light, two men with charcoal skin pluck six fish from a 50-foot net, tossing them on the sand at their feet. Only two other canoes are visible down the length of the beach, each yielding a catch of less than 20 fish.

“Fifty, 60 years ago, you have a lot of dories,” Vincent Lopez said, gesturing toward the dugout canoes at the shoreline. “From end to end you have dories.”

In Seine Bight, a coastal village in the Stann Creek District of southern Belize, only a handful of men still maintain the Garifuna fishing culture.

The village is named for a traditional fishing net, but the handmade seine net has been replaced by the store-bought trammel net. On any given morning, only three or four boats glide ashore, offering a modest catch for the villagers to buy. 

Fish is a dietary staple of the Garifuna, descendants of Carib Indians and black Africans originally from the island of St. Vincent, and is commonly used in ancestral ceremonies. Fishing serves as a means of meditation and entertainment for the villagers in Seine Bight, and it provides a solid source of income for many other Garifuna villages in Belize.

Yet, the fishing culture of the Garifuna in Seine Bight is rapidly fading due in large part to a lack of interest by youth and compounded by the destruction of the fishing grounds due to tourism, illegal fishing and shrimp trawling.

 As the sky brightens, the men continue to haul the net from the foam-green dory. They pull a manta ray with a two-foot wingspan from the net and toss it atop a heap of leaves and garbage on the beach.

The men chop the manta ray into large chunks and collect their share of fish. The catch will provide just enough for the boat owner, net owner and the two men who set the net. Some days, however, there is only enough to feed two of the men, and the others wander down the beach to purchase fish from other fishermen.

After dividing the fish, each fisherman heads in a separate direction to go to work. In the evening, they will set the net in a new location with hopes of a bigger catch.

“You can’t give up,” said Thomas “Turkey” Nunez. “There are bad days just like the weather. If you don’t catch today, you go out there and try again the next day.”

Although many sell their catch to supplement their income, these fishermen work for their supper. Today, just three men in the village fish for their primary source of income. Of the three, only one is under the age of 60. Traditional net making has all but halted, and local restaurants often are forced to buy seafood from outside the village.

Lopez stands with his arms crossed watching the sunlight ripple across the water. The village elders have tried to elicit an interest from the youth, he said, but they simply don’t care to learn.

 “When you come with the fish in your hull, they come around,” he said. “You cannot live that way. I’ll teach you how to fish for you to survive out of the sea, but I cannot come all the time to give you fish when you can go out and do the same. Sometimes you tell them, ‘Come on. Let me show you how to handle this thing and to do this thing.’ And they don’t come because they don’t want to learn.”

Although the older villagers tend to point to the laziness of the youth as the primary cause of the dying culture, other factors, such as the expense of dories and fishing equipment, play a role. However, the most common reason they don’t fish is because they “don’t have time,” according to several village youth. They are busy working other jobs, like those recently established by the burgeoning tourism industry.

Over the past several years, Belize has attempted to develop a more stable economy with tourism serving as a major component. In Seine Bight and neighboring towns on the peninsula, tourism has become the foundation of the economy.

While tourism has provided much-needed jobs, it has impacted the village in ways unforeseen.

Phillip “Taka” Ferguson, 25, said that until recently he was fishing every day to support himself. Although he fishes when he can, private tour guide work is now his main source of income. Others also have abandoned more traditional jobs, like fishing, to work in tourism or related industries such as construction.

“It’s because here is more of a tourist destination, and money-wise, everyone is looking for ways to get the fastest money and more money,” he said. “You have a good amount of them growing up right now they’d rather easy money than hard work.”

Ferguson can make about $165 (BZ$330) on a snorkeling day trip to one of the nearby islands if he has a full boat and uses only one tank of gas, which costs $4.63 a gallon as of Nov. 8. This is no small sum in a district with a minimum daily food basket of about $1.07, according to 2002 Belize government statistics. 

Most Seine Bight fishermen charge $1.25 per pound for common fish or $2 per pound for the coveted June fish. If a fisherman brought in 50 pounds and sold all of it, he would make about $63.

 The choice seems obvious, but tourism is not always steady. Sherlette Augustine, who works at a nearby hotel, goes without work for days at a time when the hotel has a slow period.                  

Fishing, however, has provided a reliable source of income for Simeon Augustine and his family for more than 40 years—no small feat for a man with 17 children, six of whom still live at home.

Located on a peninsula, Seine Bight is bordered on two sides by water. On one side is the sea, and on the opposite shore is Placencia Lagoon, a haven for manatees and, many claim, a producer of fish more tasty than those from the sea. It is also Simeon’s favorite place to fish.

In the late afternoon, Simeon slides his peeling, blue canoe ashore and pulls himself out onto the lagoon’s muddy bank. He’s been on the water since 6 a.m., and his deteriorating, 70-quart “ice box” is piled high.

Transferring a bucket of fishing line, a net, a battered oar and the cooler into a wheelbarrow, he slowly makes his way along the narrow, makeshift boardwalk leading from the lagoon to the dirt road in front of his house.

In the yard, Simeon begins to divide the catch. He keeps enough to feed his family. The rest will be sold for $1.25 a pound.

“If I sell those fish,” he said, nodding toward the wheelbarrow, “I can make BZ$100 [$50] or more, and no job around here to pay me BZ$100 a day, you know...Sometimes in one hour I make more than BZ$200.”

            Still, many are lured by tourism jobs. As of April 2004, about 15 percent of the 10,410 employed in the Stann Creek District worked in the tourism industry. Fishing employed less than half that number, according to Belize government statistics.

The work force is not the only factor impacted by tourism. The influx of tourists has put a strain on the already suffering Seine Bight fishing grounds.

Every year more tourists come to Belize to snorkel and dive on the Barrier Reef, which is located about 20 miles off the coast of Seine Bight, and runs from Corozal, north of the village, to southern Belize near Punta Gorda.

The health of the reef, a vital habitat and breeding ground for fish and other wildlife, affects the marine population in all of the surrounding waters. Tourists often unintentionally damage portions of the reef by touching the coral or taking a unique souvenir.

But tourists are not the only culprits in reef destruction and the resulting impact on Seine Bight fishing grounds.

Illegal fishing has plagued the fertile Belizean waters for years. The reef, which ends just north of the country’s southernmost border, harbors large populations of coveted fish, conch and lobster.

Neighboring countries, most notably Guatemala and Honduras, have become notorious for pilfering fish under the cover of night or using stolen Belizean boats to elude the coastal patrols. They then export the product from their own countries, effectively depleting the marine population and robbing Belize of economic gain.

Charles Leslie, a 30-year commercial and sports fishing veteran from nearby Placencia, has spent years researching fishing issues. When he compared the number of Belizean exports to those of Honduras, he was outraged. 

“Belize is supposed to be the number one producer of conch, but we only export 2 percent of the conch that goes to the U.S.,” he said. “Honduras exports 23 percent of the conch, but they come from Belize first. If a boat pulls up to check a Belizean boat and it’s loaded with conch, I mean, they can’t do anything. But when night falls, they take it to Honduras.”

 Other fishermen live in Belize but abuse their own fishing grounds by disregarding seasons as well as size and weight limitations. When juvenile species are taken, marine life doesn’t have a chance to replenish itself.

According to Leslie, the impact is noticeable.

“From my experience, we are not catching the amount of snook we used to catch,” he said. “The permit fishing is good in some areas where we control the area from people going out there and set nets, but outside of that is poor. Bonefish is almost eliminated from some areas now.”

Tourism and illegal fishing have had a huge impact on marine habitats, but the most large-scale destruction of feeding grounds has resulted from shrimp trawling. The nets capture large numbers of juvenile fish and other sea creatures with the shrimp, which are tossed back into the water dead or alive.

Birds trail the ships by the hundreds, feeding on the carnage.

While the government has limited shrimp trawling to some extent—the number of shrimp trawlers is down to two from 10—one ship is enough to perpetuate the damage that has already been done along the peninsula.

One alternative to shrimp trawling is shrimp farming, which has been implemented in some areas of Belize. The industry has grown at a rapid pace, jumping in production from 9.6 million pounds in 2002 to more than 24 million pounds in 2003, according to Belize government statistics.

But such large-scale production is not without consequences.

Pollution is a side effect of shrimp farming, and it has already had an impact on Placencia Lagoon, one of the few Seine Bight fishing grounds that was unaffected by tourism, illegal fishing and trawling.

Two of the three full-time fishermen work the lagoon on a daily basis. They felt the repercussions when a shrimp farm released chemicals that killed off a tributary creek just more than a year ago.

“This time we were lucky,” Ferguson said. “It happened during the rainy season. I would say it took three months, it [the water] was back to normal. Within a year, there were fish back in the water.”

Although no extensive research has been done on the impact of shrimp farming on the lagoon, Friends of Nature, a Belizean environmental group, reported on its Web site that preliminary tests indicate low dissolved oxygen at the mouth of one creek near a shrimp farm. Friends of Nature went further to say that the “combination of tourism and shrimp-farming industries could overwhelm the ecology of Placencia Lagoon.”

Other countries with large shrimp farming industries have seen effects that could be indicative of Belize’s future. A Belize Development Trust article reported “viral diseases are now on the rampage in countries where concentrated shrimp aquaculture and many farms have degraded the local coastal zone water supplies.”

Still, lagoon fishing is the most promising alternative for Seine Bight fisherman. While its future is uncertain, for now the lagoon’s shallow water provides a richer feeding ground for fish than that of the sea.

The only young fisherman in the village, Randolph Walton, 24, drifts in the solitude of the lagoon from early morning until late afternoon. Walton supplies seafood to a local Chinese restaurant and other residents to support his girlfriend and their infant. He can often make $100 in one day—proof that it is still possible for the younger generation to make a living off of fishing despite environmental issues that plague the area.

Walton, like most children in the village, learned how to fish as a young child. However, many lose interest as they get older.

In the morning, as the fishermen begin to haul nets from their boats at the seashore, Bjohn Augustine, 7, stands clustered with other kids on the beach. Some bring money to buy fish for their parents, but Bjohn merely watches. 

When the last of the fish is sold and the fishermen have left for other jobs, Bjohn wanders back toward the water. As he carefully unwraps fishing line from a wood block, he kicks up clumps of sand at the shoreline hunting for bait.

His arm shoots down. In an instant his hook is baited and tossed into the water.

But soon he is distracted by his friends on the beach. Climbing atop a rotting, wooden post, he flips backward into the water as they cheer him on.

Resolving the environmental issues wreaking havoc on Seine Bight is pertinent, but many believe that maintaining the interest of youth like Bjohn is the key to reviving the Garifuna fishing culture.

“We have to train our youths,” Lopez said. “Because if we the elderly people doesn’t do this, they will never start. So they have to come together so that we can teach them how to do this so that they can live on it later on.”

The future seems bleak to many, but a few in the village refuse to give up hope. Fishing is too deeply rooted in the Seine Bight community, they say.

“Even when we neglect it [our culture], it has a way of driving us back to the roots,” Ferguson said.