Yvonne Ba­boolal

Nine-foot waves which sud­den­ly ap­peared along To­ba­go's east­ern coast­line on Mon­day, from Mt Irvine to Par­latu­vi­er, have re­sult­ed in the de­struc­tion of sev­er­al boats and the col­lapse of a jet­ty and brought fear to res­i­dents. Peo­ple in To­ba­go said they have nev­er seen any­thing like it be­fore and are thank­ing God no lives were lost.

The waves ap­peared Mon­day morn­ing and pulled fish­ing boats and plea­sure craft off their an­chors and crashed them on­to the shore. The Met Of­fice said the un­usu­al oc­cur­rence is due to a large front off the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent which is head­ing to­wards the At­lantic.

Pi­geon Point fish­er­man, Ian Robin­son, spared be­cause he spent Mon­day night se­cur­ing his boat, is blam­ing it on the moon. Draw­ing a cres­cent in the sand on Pi­geon Point beach yes­ter­day, he said: "Is a rough seas moon. From now un­til Feb­ru­ary we will have rough seas."

Robin­son said two boats from the area's 70-plus fish­er­men broke an­chor and came ashore, while oth­ers were slight­ly dam­aged. "Sev­en mash up in Mt Irvine and a yacht too. Two sink in Mt Irvine and two in Tur­tle Beach. The jet­ty in Spey­side col­lapse, said Robin­son, who owns a 32-foot­er. He added: "If the boats were prop­er­ly se­cured this might not have hap­pened. I come down three times last night to make sure my boat was an­chored good.

"I dou­ble up all my rope. Them fel­las for­get who the sea is," the dread­locked Robin­son said, re­fer­ring to the sea as a moth­er. Robin­son had faith the Gov­ern­ment would come to the fish­er­men's as­sis­tance. He said fish­ing was the on­ly source of in­come for a large num­ber of To­bag­o­ni­ans. He added: "A boat is close to $200,000 and an en­gine is $31,000 and up. Some of the boats dam­aged in Mt Irvine are be­yond re­pair.

"Some en­gines are un­der the wa­ter. Fish­er­men usu­al­ly go to sea with two en­gines, one for back up." Robin­son said the in­ci­dent would ham­per the af­fect­ed fish­er­men. "They have chil­dren to send to school, bills to pay," he added. To­ba­go East MP Ver­nel­la Allen-Top­pin told the T&T Guardian she met af­fect­ed fish­er­men in Cas­tara and Par­latu­vi­er Mon­day evening and promised to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the Gov­ern­ment on their be­half to as­sist them.

"I asked them to com­pile a re­port on what they lost and the im­pli­ca­tions for the con­tin­u­a­tion of their fish­ing ac­tiv­i­ties," she said.