Travellers from Blowing Point, Anguilla, to St. Martin, and from that French territory to here, were taken aback on Wednesday morning, January 13, to find that access for the Anguilla ferries to the Marigot pier was blocked. As a consequence, the first ferryboat to have left Anguilla was forced to return to Blowing Point with its passengers. The situation was however resolved by St. Martin and Anguilla officials, thus allowing the ferryboat service to resume at 1.30 p.m.

The available information indicated that the blockade was done by French fishermen, reportedly in retaliation for the intercepting of a St. Martin fishing boat by the Anguilla Police Marine Unit about a mile off the Forest Bay on January 5.
In the weekly Anguilla Police press conference, Deputy Commissioner, Rudolph Proctor, reported that on that date the Police Launch, Dolphin, intercepted a fishing boat outside the Forest Bay area and conducted a check for the relevant licences to fish in Anguilla’s territorial waters. It turned out that the fishermen did not possess the required licences and were warned about fishing illegally in the island’s waters and allowed to return to St. Martin with no further action taken against them.
Mr. Proctor noted that there were a number of persons from St. Martin who were issued with licences to fish in Anguillian waters and they were carrying out their industry with no difficulties. “We are continuing to patrol our coastlines on a regular basis,” he stated. "While we cannot definitively say that there are cross-border incursions probably influencing the crime situation here, there are some strong suspicious seeing that we have intercepted some people here before who entered our territory. We have beefed up our patrols and are continuing to check both local and foreign vessels plying around our coasts. It is only part of protecting our national security interests and our fishing zones.”

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