Kevon Felmine

Still reel­ing from the ef­fects of last De­cem­ber's oil spill in the Gulf of Paria, Clax­ton Bay fish­er­men have writ­ten to Petrotrin pres­i­dent Khalid Has­sanali call­ing for an im­me­di­ate as­sess­ment of the pol­lut­ed wa­ters.Vice-pres­i­dent of the Clax­ton Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion, Bha­dose Sook­nanan, yes­ter­day called on Petrotrin to vis­it the Clax­ton Bay fish­ing de­pot to get a first-hand view of the oil and sludge that they said have sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­plet­ed the fish stock.In the let­ter to Petrotrin's board of di­rec­tors, Sook­nanan said al­though the Corex­it 9500 dis­per­sant dis­solved the heavy crude float­ing on the wa­ters, the re­main­ing residue sank to the ocean bed and has spread through­out the en­tire gulf.

It added: "The Corex­it dis­solves the oil, yes, but the re­main­ing residue sinks to the bot­tom of the sea and with the com­bi­na­tion of the wind, tide and cur­rents, it is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing and dam­ag­ing our nets."When we slack­en our nets, in­stead of trap­ping fish­es, we get an oily/slush/mud sub­stance up­on re­trieval."This pre­vents us from mak­ing our liv­ing be­cause we fear our nets might be de­stroyed. At the mo­ment, we the fish­er­men are be­ing af­fect­ed by this be­cause it pre­vents us from earn­ing an in­come to sup­port our fam­i­lies."Sookanan said that be­tween Jan­u­ary 31 and Sun­day, one fish­er­man who went out to sea re­turned with oil in his nets in­stead of fish. He said they have pho­tos of dam­aged nets and boats as ev­i­dence when a Petrotrin rep­re­sen­ta­tive met with them.

He said since the oil spill, not on­ly were La Brea and Ce­dros res­i­dents af­fect­ed but fish­er­men in the en­tire gulf."Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do and Clax­ton Bay fish­er­men are al­so feel­ing the pinch, from the fish­er­men to the ven­dors to the con­sumers be­cause fish is not sell­ing. Peo­ple don't want to buy fish be­cause they are say­ing it is from the gulf and that it is con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. The catch rate is al­ready low."It is not fea­si­ble to go to sea when you pur­chase $400 in fu­el... buy ice and nets... it is not prof­itable. Nine­ty per cent of the fish­er­men in Clax­ton Bay are not work­ing be­cause they are afraid of the oil con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their boats and nets."We are call­ing on Petrotrin to put their busi­ness in or­der and see what best they can do to help fish­er­men," Sook­nanan added.