To­day marks ten days since Pe­nal fa­ther of two Alex Sookhoo went miss­ing while bathing at Colum­bus Bay, Ce­dros.His rel­a­tives re­main hope­ful that the body of the 28-year-old bus dri­ver of Lowkie Trace would sur­face soon so they could get clo­sure and set his soul free.Yes­ter­day Sookhoo's fa­ther Nan­deo, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, said the fam­i­ly had been con­duct­ing prayers and mak­ing of­fer­ings to Moth­er Gan­ga (Hin­du de­ity of the sea) to re­lease Sookhoo's body so they could per­form his fi­nal rites.Nan­deo said it had been a very trau­mat­ic and dif­fi­cult ten days for the fam­i­ly and they just want­ed to have some mea­sure of clo­sure.

He said they were hop­ing that the body would wash ashore."Every­body is still in a sad state, there is noth­ing we can do. We are in a bit of a help­less state right now. We did a cer­tain amount of per­son­al rit­u­als and we had a prayer cer­e­mo­ny near the ocean, Moth­er Gan­ga is a liv­ing be­ing you know, and we had to give her wor­ship to re­lease the body. We have done that and we are hop­ing that with the help of hu­mans and God, God in­spires man and woman to do some­thing, (that some­thing will hap­pen). We are go­ing by faith right now," he said.Sookhoo was last seen alive around 2.45 pm on April 13. He dived off a rock at Colum­bus Bay and did not resur­face. Nan­deo said Sookhoo's moth­er was not tak­ing the en­tire sit­u­a­tion well."You know how dif­fi­cult it is for nine days to know some­one drown and is still out there," he lament­ed.

Nan­deo ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to put up signs warn­ing bathers about the dan­gers of bathing at Colum­bus bay. He said he went to the beach over the East­er week­end and many peo­ple were on the beach. He said there were no life guards on the beach in case of emer­gency and "that is a pop­u­lar beach­ing area."He said the fam­i­ly re­ceived spir­i­tu­al guid­ance and they were told that Sookhoo's body was trapped un­der the wa­ter and on­ly deep sea divers would be able to re­trieve it. Nan­deo said the fam­i­ly was giv­en the lo­ca­tion of the body and he would make con­tact with the Coast Guard to get divers to search that area.Yes­ter­day Lieu­tenant Kirk Jean Bap­tiste, T&T Coast Guard, said since the sec­ond day divers have been go­ing un­der­wa­ter in search of Sookhoo's body with "neg­a­tive sight­ings."Dives, he ex­plained, are done based on cur­rents, their speed and flow."Some­times the strength of the cur­rent pre­vents the body from re­cov­ery. The cur­rent could keep the body down," he said.

Jean Bap­tiste said the search for Sookhoo was one of re­cov­ery rather than res­cue.He urged bathers to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion in wa­ters around the coun­try since cli­mate change is­sues were af­fect­ing the beach ar­eas."Peo­ple need to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion and prac­tice prop­er safe­ty in util­is­ing our wa­ters and riv­er ways as a means of en­ter­tain­ment and fun. The Coast Guard un­der­stands the emo­tion­al pain and trau­ma in los­ing loved ones in a mar­itime en­vi­ron­ment, hav­ing lost some of our own in con­duct­ing res­cue ef­forts. Hence the rea­son we do not take mat­ters, per­sons miss­ing in mar­itime en­vi­ron­ment, light­ly," he added.PC Ho­sein, of the Ce­dros Po­lice Sta­tion, is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.