Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Just a few short years ago, it was easy for lo­cal fish­er­men to con­duct an il­le­gal trade with Venezue­lan fish­er­men aboard deep sea trawlers. For a few US dol­lars, T&T fish­er­men would pur­chase crates of high-grade shrimp, al­ready boxed, which could then be re­tailed on the lo­cal mar­ket at $40 per pound. But since Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez banned trawl­ing in March 2009 to pro­tect coastal bio­di­ver­si­ty, T&T fish­er­men have been fac­ing ex­treme hard­ships.

Apart from bat­tling with the drug car­tels who use T&T as a ma­jor trans­ship­ment point, fish­er­men are al­so suf­fer­ing be­cause of de­plet­ed fish stocks, loss of mar­itime space to fa­cil­i­tate hy­dro­car­bon ex­ploita­tion and on­go­ing "ha­rass­ment" by Venezuela's Guardia Na­cional. Al­most every week, T&T fish­er­men are im­pris­oned in Venezuela for al­leged­ly en­croach­ing in their ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

In an in­ter­view last week, long-time fish­ing ac­tivist Es­ook Ali said it was high time that Gov­ern­ment fol­low in the foot­steps of Chavez, who in­vest­ed 70 mil­lion bo­li­vars (US$30 mil­lion) to de­com­mis­sion trawl­ing boats to pro­tect bio­di­ver­si­ty and in­crease lo­cal fish pro­duc­tion.Ali said trawlers in T&T were de­stroy­ing prime breed­ing grounds and this was the main cause for a de­plet­ed fish­ing stock.

"The area lo­cat­ed off Ica­cos is a main breed­ing ground for fish­es and it is most im­por­tant to the en­tire Caribbean. This is be­cause there are five rivers from Venezuela which flow in­to our space stretch­ing from Moru­ga to Ica­cos Point, but these deep sea trawlers have de­stroyed the beds and dis­turbed all the young fish­es, the stone and the rocks.

"We need to pro­tect this breed­ing ground and the first thing we must al­so do, just as Chavez did, is to ban these trawlers," Ali rec­om­mend­ed.He al­so said there was an im­me­di­ate need to build ar­ti­fi­cial reefs. A few years ago, Ali said, a State-owned petro-chem­i­cal com­pa­ny built reefs made with old tyres along the south­ern coasts off Ica­cos. "We were amazed that with­in three months, so much fish­es were caught. This ar­ti­fi­cial reef will not cost much to build. The Gov­ern­ment must find a way to pick up all the old tyres and cre­ate this reef so that we will have a bet­ter fish pro­duc­tion lo­cal­ly," Ali said.

'Set up Con­sulate at Tu­cu­pi­ta'

With re­gards to the ar­rest of fish­er­men in Venezue­lan wa­ters, Ali called on For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan to set up a Con­sulate at Tu­cu­pi­ta, lo­cat­ed about 750 kilo­me­tres from Venezuela's cap­i­tal Cara­cas.

"We need a Con­sulate in Tu­cu­pi­ta or even at Ped­er­nales so that when our fish­er­men are ar­rest­ed, we will have no dif­fi­cul­ties with the lan­guage bar­ri­er," Ali said. Ped­er­nales is one of the four mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties that makes up the east­ern Venezue­lan State of Delta Amacuro. The ac­tivist claimed that when­ev­er lo­cal fish­er­men are ar­rest­ed in Venezuela, it takes days for Con­sulate of­fi­cials at Cara­cas to as­sist be­cause of the dis­tance.

He al­so called on Gov­ern­ment to sign a new com­mon fish­ing agree­ment which would es­tab­lish bet­ter re­la­tions with T&T and Venezuela on the prin­ci­ples of sov­er­eign­ty and na­tion­al in­de­pen­dence. "We are not ask­ing to shrimp in Venezuela, we are ask­ing for per­mis­sion to fish there and they could fish in our wa­ters. The cur­rent fish­ing agree­ment has ex­pired and we are fac­ing too much chal­lenges with in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and the drug car­tels," Ali said.

Sev­er­al fish­ing agree­ments have been signed be­tween Venezuela and T&T. Among them were the Fish­eries Agree­ment signed on De­cem­ber 26, 1985, the Fish­eries Agree­ment signed on De­cem­ber 12, 1977 and the con­tro­ver­sial 1990 Mar­itime De­lim­i­ta­tion Treaty. This Treaty, which Caribbean coun­ter­parts be­lieve gives T&T an un­fair edge in mar­itime bound­ary, has been con­demned by the Bar­ba­di­an au­thor­i­ties.

Hy­dro-car­bon ex­ploita­tion

Mean­while, fish­er­men from the west­ern coasts said they too were suf­fer­ing be­cause of hy­dro-car­bon ex­ploita­tion. Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co­op­er­a­tive Sal­im Gool said fish­er­men were slow­ly be­ing pushed out of their fish­ing zones be­cause of oil and gas ex­plo­rations. Fol­low­ing the start of re­cent seis­mic and sea bed sur­veys, Gool said fish­es no longer spawn or feed along the west­ern coats. He said too much pol­lu­tion was al­so af­fect­ing fish stocks.

"These seis­mic sur­veys and vi­bra­tions cause the fish­es to go crazy. They do not stay close to where these sur­veys are done. Right now the wa­ter taxi is al­so tak­ing away fish­ing space from us. Every­body is claim­ing a part of our fish­ing zone and we are slow­ly be­ing pushed out," Gool said.He not­ed that over 200 fish­er­men have giv­en up their liveli­hood be­cause it was no longer prof­itable. He al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to in­vest in fish­eries by pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion for lo­cal fish­er­men.Mean­while, fish­er­men of Clax­ton Bay said that drug deal­ers were bring­ing in il­le­gal car­go at sev­er­al points along the coasts. The source said "mod­ern day" pi­rates were steal­ing fish­ing nets by hi­jack­ing poor fish­er­men.

On Au­gust 16, last year, sev­en fish­er­men, in­clud­ing a 10-year-old boy were at­tacked by so-called pi­rates in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents. Two of the fish­er­men Kr­isha Apoo and Moti­lal Ramkha­lawan died af­ter be­ing chopped and thrown over­board. The lone sur­vivor of the at­tack Nor­ris Raj said he begged the ban­dits who hi­jacked the fish­ing boat to throw the two men a life jack­et, but they re­fused.

CON­TRO­VER­SY WITH FISH­ING BOUND­ARIES

In 2004, Bar­ba­dos and Trinidad and To­ba­go be­came em­broiled in a bit­ter strug­gle over their mar­itime bound­ary and as­so­ci­at­ed fish­ing rights. The dis­pute arose out of the 1990 Mar­itime De­lim­i­ta­tion Treaty that Trinidad and To­ba­go had signed with Venezuela. Bar­ba­dos de­cid­ed to sub­mit the is­sue to bind­ing ar­bi­tra­tion by the Unit­ed Na­tions.

In Oc­to­ber 2005, the two coun­tries be­gan ar­gu­ments in their mar­itime dis­pute case be­fore the non-gov­ern­men­tal Ar­bi­tra­tion Tri­bunal of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for Dis­pute Res­o­lu­tion in Lon­don, and the case even­tu­al­ly went be­fore the UN-sup­port­ed Per­ma­nent Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion at the Hague. The fi­nal ver­dict, de­liv­ered in April 2006, was seen as a vic­to­ry for both par­ties, be­cause it recog­nised the rights of Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­man to fish in Trinida­di­an wa­ters but re­ject­ed a claim by Bar­ba­dos to ex­clu­sive mar­itime ac­cess.

NE­GO­TI­A­TIONS ON­GO­ING-RAM­BACHAN

Mean­while, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said he was aware of the fish­er­men's con­cerns and was work­ing to­wards a new fish­ing ac­cord."Right now we are in the process of ne­go­ti­at­ing the fish­ing agree­ment. Pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions have be­gun," Ram­bachan said.He added: "We have al­so in­ten­si­fied the ef­forts of the T&T Coast Guard to give pro­tec­tion to fish­er­men in our wa­ters."How­ev­er, Ram­bachan said it was im­por­tant that lo­cal fish­er­men re­spect the bound­aries of the Venezue­lan peo­ple."We are ask­ing that our fish­er­men do not vi­o­late the con­di­tions un­der which fish­ing takes place and we are ask­ing that they do not go in­to Venezue­lan wa­ters."

Say­ing that it was nec­es­sary that lo­cal fish­er­men show re­spect, Ram­bachan said: "We must main­tain our ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty."He added that cur­rent­ly, Gov­ern­ment has been ex­chang­ing doc­u­ments with the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ty with the hope that a new agree­ment will soon be signed.With re­gards to the con­struc­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial reefs, Ram­bachan said that ques­tion should be bet­ter ad­dressed by the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture. How­ev­er, Bharat could not be reached for com­ment on his cel­lu­lar phone.