Joshua Sur­tees

Two ships an­chored a mile off Bayshore in north west­ern Trinidad have sunk, leak­ing oil and diesel in­to the sea, ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness re­ports.The ships, part of a fleet of 12, have been an­chored in the har­bour for over two years, clear­ly vis­i­ble from Care­nage and Glen­coe, in wa­ters close to the T&T Yacht Club.Steven Valdez, a mem­ber of the T&T Game Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, spot­ted one of the ships cap­sized and one par­tial­ly sub­merged on Sun­day and said he was "very con­cerned at what I saw."

As the ves­sels are in just 20 feet of wa­ter they can­not sink to the bot­tom, but are stick­ing out of the wa­ter. A fur­ther con­cern is that at any time more boats could cap­size or sink.A con­trac­tor re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of wrecked ves­sels and le­gal af­fairs for the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, Com­modore Gar­net Best, has been deal­ing with the own­er, Nguyen Hai Chau, own­er of Trinidad Vina Ltd, for more than a year.

As Hai Chau paid moor­ing charges up un­till Oc­to­ber, the ships are not clas­si­fied as aban­doned, but the own­er must abide by Sec­tion 334 of the Ship­ping Act or will be faced with the re­moval of his ves­sels. He is look­ing for a ship­yard to hold the boats be­fore dis­man­tling them to sell for scrap iron.The Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion is re­spon­si­ble for pol­lu­tion caused by ves­sels, wrecks and aban­doned ships.

Ships that are kept long term in T&T wa­ters are ex­pect­ed, un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Ship­ping Act, to keep some­body on­board, be lit at night, be main­tained and not pose a haz­ard in terms of nav­i­ga­tion."If you are not com­pli­ant, your ship can be re­moved and the own­er charged the cost of re­moval," Best, a for­mer com­mand­ing of­fi­cer of the Coast Guard, told the T&T Guardian, adding the mea­sure had nev­er ac­tu­al­ly been en­forced.

Why are theves­sels here?

The sto­ry of how the ships came to be left at Bayshore for over two years was told to the T&T Guardian by a ma­rine pi­lot who pre­ferred to re­main un­named.Orig­i­nal­ly owned by New Or­leans-based com­pa­ny Tide­wa­ter Ma­rine, which leas­es ves­sels for the off­shore oil in­dus­try, the fleet was reg­is­tered in Brazil, the source said.Man­u­fac­tured in 1983, they reached the end of their work­ing life in 2010 and were ready to be sold for scrap.

Ac­cord­ing to the source the Brazil­ian Gov­ern­ment told the US com­pa­ny, "Don't leave your rub­bish in Brazil­ian wa­ters," forc­ing them to look fur­ther afield for a place to leave ships while they found pur­chasers. Our source claimed for­eign ship own­ers see T&T as the ide­al place to leave ships, "You can ar­rive with a ship and can say any­thing to the coast guard, that you are here for re­pairs or wait­ing for or­ders. The Gulf of Paria is per­fect, love­ly and calm. There's rea­son­able se­cu­ri­ty... it's away from the hur­ri­cane belt, charges for an­chor­age are lit­tle or noth­ing."

The ships were first sold to Win Green Hold­ings LLC, an­oth­er US com­pa­ny, then sold to Chi­nese busi­ness­man Vin Lee for scrap iron.Lee searched for a place to have them cut up and ex­port­ed in ves­sels to Chi­na (scrap iron is one of T&T's biggest ex­ports aside from oil and gas, and Chi­na is one of the world's biggest im­porters).

Hav­ing left them just north­east of the Five Is­lands, away from ship­ping lanes, in shal­low wa­ter, Lee had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing some­where to turn the boats in­to scrap met­al and sold them again to the cur­rent own­er, Hai Chau.Now the boats have sunk, it is un­clear whether the new own­er has any in­ten­tion of re-float­ing them and fin­ish­ing the job.

En­vi­ron­men­tal threat?

On Sun­day, Valdez no­ticed what he de­scribed as "old oil or flu­id" seep­ing from the up­turned boats.He sent e-mails, along with pho­tographs of the se­mi-sub­merged ves­sels, to the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) stat­ing: "It's on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the (ves­sels) form a ceme­tery of sev­er­al tonnes of old met­al stick­ing out of the wa­ter cre­at­ing a ter­ri­ble eye­sore and a haz­ard for the boat­ing and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

"The EMA should al­so get in­volved now as there are haz­ardous flu­ids com­ing out of the sunken ships that will cause se­vere dam­age to beach­es, yachts, mari­nas, jet­ties and ocean life," he said.The EMA, in an e-mail to the T&T Guardian on Tues­day, said: "The mat­ter of derelict ves­sels is not with­in the di­rect ju­ris­dic­tion of the au­thor­i­ty but rather, the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (MSD)."As such, all com­plaints re­gard­ing derelict ves­sels should be ad­dressed with the di­vi­sion di­rect­ly... with re­spect to oil spills.

"The EMA al­so ad­vis­es that the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs is the lead co-or­di­na­tor of the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan (NOSCP) and in this cir­cum­stance, should be con­tact­ed for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion."As of Tues­day, Best in­spect­ed the ves­sels and re­port­ed that no more flu­id was seen. Asked what might have hap­pened to the fu­el on board, he said: "It may have dis­si­pat­ed."

T&T be­com­ing a dump­ing ground

The sto­ry of the 12 ships from Brazil is not with­out prece­dent in T&T and laws are need­ed on an­chor­ing/aban­don­ing ships in off­shore wa­ters, ac­cord­ing to the Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion and Best.Six­ty or more ves­sels have been brought in­to T&T wa­ters in the last two years, raft­ed to­geth­er and left ei­ther to be sold for scrap met­al or sim­ply aban­doned. A year ago sev­er­al ves­sels and their crew from Tai­wan were aban­doned, lead­ing to the repa­tri­a­tion of some crew mem­bers.

Some of the ves­sels sank in the har­bour, leav­ing wrecks just be­low the sur­face of the wa­ter in Port-of-Spain, one of which may have caused the Har­bour Mas­ter cruise boat to run aground dur­ing a par­ty at low tide in Sep­tem­ber.The Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion says 20 more boats ar­rived re­cent­ly from the Far East and can be seen from the fore­shore in Ch­aguara­mas, tied to­geth­er and sta­tion­ary.

The as­so­ci­a­tion reg­u­lar­ly meets with the Mar­itime Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and the Min­istry of Trans­port and makes rec­om­men­da­tions for charges for an­chor­ing boats in T&T wa­ters.A spokesman told the T&T Guardian: "In or­der to en­sure boats are not kept here in­def­i­nite­ly, they ought to charge $1,000 for the first month, $10,000 for the sec­ond month and then by the third month some­thing pro­hib­i­tive like $200,000. That would give own­ers a clear sig­nal that af­ter two months it's time to move on.

"Al­ter­na­tive­ly, they could put up a large bond up­on ar­rival, if for ex­am­ple they need to stay for six months and can show a con­tract stat­ing the in­ten­tions and des­ti­na­tion of the ships."Best said the Min­istry of Trans­port was "in the process of amend­ing the Ship­ping Act and strength­en­ing the laws around aban­don­ment."