Kevon Felmine

As La Brea res­i­dents joined the trade union move­ment's protest at Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, cor­beaux were hav­ing a ban­quet on the beach­es, feast­ing on hun­dreds of dead fish which con­stant­ly washed ashore.It has been more than three weeks that the fish­ing and as­phalt com­mu­ni­ty has been see­ing rot­ting car­cass­es on the seafront, but yes­ter­day's fish kill was one of the largest seen by some res­i­dents.

As a T&T Guardian news team vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty yes­ter­day, it was like a ghost town, with res­i­dents choos­ing to seek refuge in their homes and peek­ing out from time to time. Not even chil­dren could be seen play­ing in their yards.The scenic view along the Point Sable, Cof­fee and Sta­tion beach­es was over­shad­owed by the stench of the fish kill, which could be smelled for miles as the strong sea breeze blew in­land.

Flocks of cor­beaux sav­age­ly gob­bled the rot­ting car­cass­es while the egrets wan­dered along search­ing for fresh fish to eat. Cham­pi­on Bob­blers, Par­adise2 and 11 oth­er pirogues docked on the shore were signs of a dor­mant fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.A few res­i­dents who ven­tured out of their homes said the car­cass­es washed up since Thurs­day night and when they awoke yes­ter­day, the beach was al­most im­pass­able.

De­spite a crew from Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) tak­ing away some of the fish for test­ing and res­i­dents' ef­forts to clean the beach, mid-af­ter­noon high tide brought more car­cass­es ashore. Ac­cord­ing to fish­er­man Ri­car­do St Greaves, res­i­dents are be­com­ing more frus­trat­ed be­cause pub­lic of­fi­cials are not let­ting them know what is wrong with the fish.

Asked why the com­mu­ni­ty was so qui­et, he said many of his neigh­bours went to protest out­side the Par­lia­ment to high­light the ef­fects of the oil spill and the pos­si­ble pri­vati­sa­tion of Lake As­phalt's plant op­er­a­tions.

Petrotrin re­sponds

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Petrotrin said lab­o­ra­to­ry tests of the sea wa­ter in La Brea was neg­a­tive for con­t­a­m­i­nants.Ten­sions height­ened dur­ing the oil spill clean-up last year af­ter the com­pa­ny's con­tro­ver­sial use of Corex­it 9500 dis­per­sant.The dis­per­sant was banned in sev­er­al coun­tries af­ter stud­ies showed that it in­creas­es the tox­i­c­i­ty of the wa­ter, mak­ing it harm­ful to ma­rine life.

Petrotrin said, "The study area in­clud­ed beach­es in La Brea from Sta­tion Beach south along the coast­line to Point Sable, mov­ing north­ward up to the Riv­er Neg and up to 2 km sea­wards from the shore­line of each lo­ca­tion."Re­sults of the wa­ter and sed­i­ment qual­i­ty study showed that all pa­ra­me­ters test­ed to date were with­in ac­cept­able lim­its for heavy met­als, tem­per­a­ture, pH lev­els, salin­i­ty, dis­solved oxy­gen and To­tal Pe­tro­le­um Hy­dro­car­bons (TPH).

"Based on the en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing re­ports, there are no con­t­a­m­i­nants iden­ti­fied (in­clud­ing hy­dro­car­bons) in the ma­rine and near shore en­vi­ron­ments of La Brea."As for the bioas­say on the fish car­cass­es, Petrotrin said it has set up a team to in­ves­ti­gate the cause and had sent fish sam­ples to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Vet­eri­nary School for test­ing and analy­sis as well as an in­ter­na­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ry in the USA.