Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Mas­sive ero­sion, ris­ing sea lev­els and de­struc­tion of co­conut es­tates due to the red palm dis­ease have wreaked hav­oc in Ce­dros over the last decade. The com­mu­ni­ty is al­ready crip­pled by mount­ing drug traf­fick­ing, the fish­ing in­dus­try has dwin­dled and youths have moved out of the qui­et area to find bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in ur­ban and sub-ur­ban ar­eas.

While many peo­ple see these is­sues as neg­a­tive, south­ern busi­ness­man Ian Ali be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment can turn the "eco­nom­ic" tide in Ce­dros by us­ing the ris­ing sea lev­els to fos­ter do­mes­tic seafood farm­ing. In­stead of try­ing to re­vi­talise the co­conut in­dus­try, Ali is call­ing on Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath to em­brace aqua­cul­ture and aquapon­ics-a sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion sys­tem that com­bines a tra­di­tion­al aqua­cul­ture (rais­ing aquat­ic an­i­mals such as snails, fish, cray­fish in tanks) with hy­dro­pon­ics (cul­ti­vat­ing plants in wa­ter).

Ali, who holds a diplo­ma in aqua­cul­ture from the Unit­ed States, said the low-ly­ing vast es­tates in Ce­dros can be pur­chased by the Gov­ern­ment and trans­formed in­to a seafood farm com­pris­ing tilapia, shrimp and cat­fish. The busi­ness­man, who once lived in Ce­dros, said he con­duct­ed a study with a fish­ing com­pa­ny in the Unit­ed States to de­ter­mine the wa­ter tem­per­a­ture, salin­i­ty and soil tests which proved that Ce­dros was ide­al for aqua­cul­ture.

Ali said based on his ex­pe­ri­ence with seafood farm­ing since the 1970s, he was con­fi­dent that T&T can ben­e­fit from aqua­cul­ture and aquapon­ics. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ali said, his com­pa­ny Am­ber Seafood pi­o­neered the fish in­dus­try for T&T with the most up-to-date pro­cess­ing plant in Ce­dros with a ca­pac­i­ty of 25,000 pounds dai­ly and a fleet of sev­en 75-foot deep-sea trawlers built in Pe­ru. He ex­plained that the mar­ket­ing di­vi­sion ex­port­ed sea foods to Cana­da, USA, Lon­don, Eng­land and most of the Caribbean is­lands in­clud­ing Ja­maica and Puer­to Ri­co.

"My com­pa­ny at the time in­stalled the first fish meal plant in South Amer­i­ca with fish burg­er, fish sausage, bread­ing fish fil­let and salt fish lines," Ali said. How­ev­er, he added that de­clin­ing fish stocks as well as in­ter­na­tion­al fish­ing re­stric­tions caused him to close down his busi­ness.

"Now that sev­er­al coun­tries glob­al­ly were in­vest­ing in aqua­cul­ture and aquapon­ics, Ali be­lieves that the ge­o­graph­i­cal and at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions at Ce­dros would make the in­dus­try a prof­itable com­mer­cialised "gold mine." "It is wise that the Gov­ern­ment pur­chase some of these es­tates and start the in­dus­try on a com­mer­cial ba­sis," Ali added. He said that 200 two-acre ponds can pro­duce more than 10,000 tonnes of fish and shrimp. Say­ing that the project may cost an es­ti­mat­ed $100 mil­lion, Ali said he hoped to get pri­vate sec­tor and Gov­ern­ment aid to sup­port lo­cal seafood farm­ing.

Mean­while, Ce­dros res­i­dent Es­ook Ali who owns 100 acres of land said he was in­ter­est­ed in the project. "It is a won­der­ful idea be­cause in Venezuela they stopped the trawl­ing. You get lots of fish but no shrimp. Then Chavez gave them land, mon­ey and tech­nol­o­gy and they are now do­ing seafood farm­ing. The sur­plus is so much that they are sell­ing to us," Ali said. He not­ed that seafood farm­ing will boost the lo­cal econ­o­my and re­vi­talise the south­west­ern penin­su­la.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter: We are in­ter­est­ed

Con­tact­ed, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath said he was in­ter­est­ed in the pro­pos­al. He not­ed that Gov­ern­ment had em­barked on an ex­ten­sive pro­gramme to en­cour­age aqua­cul­ture in T&T. "We have seen the ero­sion of ma­rine fish­eries be­cause of in­dis­crim­i­nate trawl­ing over the last 20 years. We don't have suf­fi­cient sea stocks to pro­vide for our peo­ple and it is for that rea­son you find that fish sells at ex­or­bi­tant prices es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing Lent.

"By pro­vid­ing aqua­cul­ture we will be able to pro­vide the fish pro­tein for the pop­u­la­tion and keep prices at a rea­son­able lev­el," Bharath said. He said the Gov­ern­ment was try­ing to en­cour­age pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture, aqua­cul­ture and aquapon­ic be­cause pri­vate com­pa­nies are run more ef­fi­cient­ly.