Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Even with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro now a pris­on­er of the Unit­ed States, fish­er­men in South Trinidad say they will still be ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion out at sea.

Steve Mo­hammed, a fish­er­man for over three decades, said the sit­u­a­tion could still bring chal­lenges.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at King’s Wharf in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, hours af­ter Maduro and his wife were cap­tured by US forces and tak­en to New York, Mo­hammed said, “Ba­si­cal­ly it will be the same, more or less, and maybe more worse. Let’s say they (US) don’t go back and they not bomb­ing up, we will ven­ture more out. I don’t know, but time will tell. If the econ­o­my is bad there (Venezuela), the fish­er­men will come out not look­ing for fish but any­thing they can get as prey. They have more ar­tillery than we.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the ports at King’s Wharf and Ota­heite, there was no ma­jor sense of wor­ry. With the hol­i­days slow­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, few fish­er­men were out—but they are ex­pect­ed to be back at sea on Mon­day.

Since the US mil­i­tary build-up and dead­ly strikes in the Caribbean Sea and height­ened con­flict be­tween Venezuela and the US, fish­er­men had been stay­ing close to shore.

Mo­hammed added that now, in “crop” sea­son, fish­er­men must trav­el far­ther off­shore to fish. “It’s not like the rainy sea­son. You have to go close to them; some­times you drift in their wa­ter, due to wind and cur­rent.” How­ev­er, he said Venezue­lans had a his­to­ry of at­tack­ing lo­cal fish­er­men.

Mean­while, Clement Charles, pres­i­dent of the Ota­heite Red Brick Trace Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion, said a few boats ven­tured out yes­ter­day morn­ing, but every­thing was calm.

“I don’t know what ef­fects it will have long term, but re­cent­ly every­one has just a lit­tle con­cern,” he said.

How­ev­er, he was op­ti­mistic that Trinidad and To­ba­go would not ex­pe­ri­ence any neg­a­tive back­lash.

“Every­thing is sup­posed to be calm now. I don’t think it’s sup­posed to have any threat to­wards the fish­er­men present­ly be­cause of Amer­i­ca’s cap­ture of Mr Maduro. So every­thing is sup­posed to be sail­ing smooth­ly, hope­ful­ly,” Charles said.