Guyana’s coast guard commander freely admits that his surveillance and enforcement capabilities extend to just a fraction of the country’s waters.
The sole vessel able to reach the deep seas of Guyana’s 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is a repurposed minesweeper, a British naval warship that has been moored for nearly a decade, in constant need of repairs.
The other several-odd boats in the coast guard’s fleet are designed for offshore patrols of some 40 nautical miles, said Lt. Col. Michael Shahoud, head of the Guyana Defense Force Coast Guard. The country also lacks radar and camera systems to track boats.
“We have a severe challenge monitoring our maritime space,” Shahoud told InSight Crime.
With nearly 285 miles (460 kilometers) of coastline, Guyana claims some 42,800 square nautical miles of ocean. Officials can’t say for sure whether vessels are fishing illegally in the country’s ungoverned waters. National Security Adviser Gerald Gouevia suspects that they are. Gouveia, a retired army pilot, recalled a Canadian aerospace company finding them easily during a demonstration of its surveillance aircraft for Guyana’s military.
In 2021, Guyana’s coast guard had 11 patrol boats, including the derelict minesweeper, according to a report of its monitoring and control capabilities by illegal fishing expert Pramŏd Ganapathiraju. A monitoring vessel commissioned to the Fisheries Department came online last year, and further additions are underway, including the purchase of an $11.5 million patrol boat. The 115-foot vessel, scheduled to be delivered in 2022, would be able to patrol Guyana’s EEZ.
Meanwhile, inland waters are anarchic, said Pamashwar Jainarine, chairman of the Upper Corentyne Fishermen’s Co-operative Society. Fishing grounds can have upwards of 200 boats in areas meant to support some 80 vessels, said Jainarine, who blamed a licensing system run amok, where boats are registered indiscriminately. Illegal landing spots also exist, and catch data is scant.
“It’s already maxed out,” Jainarine told InSight Crime. “And then more and more boats are being put in our area of operations.”
Piracy has long been rife in the lawless waters off Guyana, whose coastline sits between those of Suriname and Venezuela. Ambushes have turned deadly. A turf war among Guyanese fishers was linked to a fatal 2018 assault in which fishers were burned, attacked with machetes, and forced overboard, some with batteries strapped to their legs as weights.
Local fishers have been robbed of boats, expensive outboard motors, and hundreds of dollars of fish and cash.
In March of last year, officials said authorities had increased patrols along the country’s northwestern coast and rivers. According to Stabroek News, a Guyanese news outlet, fishers in the Waini River area, which abuts Venezuela, were reportedly being preyed upon by armed gangs from the neighboring country.