Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Reef tour op­er­a­tors and jet ski own­ers are fum­ing over the in­crease in fines out­lined in the new To­ba­go Ma­rine Park Bill.

The bill was passed unan­i­mous­ly in the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture, Scar­bor­ough, last Thurs­day, in re­sponse to the trag­ic death of An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie. Jo­gie, sev­en, was killed af­ter be­ing struck by a jet ski in the bathing-on­ly zone at Pi­geon Point beach on April 8.

Dur­ing de­bate on the bill, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine vowed to clamp down on un­safe prac­tices, adding that he was not in­ter­est­ed in fur­ther dis­cus­sions.

Mere hours af­ter the pas­sage of the bill, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) sought and was grant­ed a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion ban­ning all jet ski op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the so­lic­i­ta­tion of pas­sen­gers, at Pi­geon Point and the Buc­coo Reef un­til May 1.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day at the Bon Ac­cord La­goon, Green To­ba­go Tours CEO Leroy George chas­tised the THA for not con­sult­ing stake­hold­ers.

George said he thought the bill be­ing de­bat­ed was the 2020 ver­sion passed by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“De­spite be­ing on top of things, I was not aware a 2026 bill was be­ing con­struct­ed,” George said.

Un­der the pre­vi­ous bill, il­le­gal en­try to the ma­rine park was pe­nalised with a fine of $2,500. How­ev­er, the 2026 ver­sion has in­creased the penal­ty to a $10,000 fine. The pun­ish­ment for hunt­ing and killing fau­na and dam­ag­ing flo­ra in the ma­rine park has al­so been el­e­vat­ed from $20,000 to $100,000.

George de­scribed the fines as ex­ces­sive and un­fair, as he not­ed that un­der the ex­ist­ing law, of­fend­ers pay just $1,000.

Not­ing that when the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment al­so dou­bled most traf­fic fines last year, there was a na­tion­al out­cry, he said, “It is now one hun­dred times the max­i­mum fine that was pos­si­ble.”

George be­lieves there is a plan “to push out To­ba­go en­tre­pre­neurs” from the ma­rine park.

“This lat­est in­ci­dent is be­ing used for an al­ter­na­tive agen­da,” he said.

George said de­spite the anger at op­er­a­tors over the lat­est in­ci­dent, the THA must ac­cept blame for the chaos that has tak­en place in the ma­rine park.

While lament­ing the death of Jo­gie, George said the nav­i­ga­tion­al guides for jet ski op­er­a­tors at Pi­geon Point have not been main­tained.

“The area where the jet skis have to pass is so close where the peo­ple have to bathe that even a short lapse in mind can cause the two to col­lide. The area he was head­ing to, there is a very nar­row chan­nel and part of the rea­son why it is nar­row is be­cause the gov­ern­ment put boul­ders that would have changed the nat­ur­al land­scape be­neath the wa­ter sur­face.”

He rec­om­mend­ed Bon Ac­cord La­goon as a pos­si­ble lo­ca­tion for jet skis to be al­lowed to op­er­ate.

“De­mon­is­ing is a re­ac­tive way of deal­ing with things. We don’t want that. We want some­thing more akin to a sea­soned leader.”

Busi­ness down af­ter in­ci­dent

Mean­while, tour op­er­a­tor Ter­rence Pitt said au­thor­i­ties have re­neged on their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to safe­ty.

“We need the de­mar­ca­tion clear­ly lit. Cap­tains have been say­ing go­ing to the Buc­coo Reef, the buoys have burst away and have not been re­placed for years. It used to be like an ob­sta­cle course; the Ny­lon Pool is here — jet skis are not al­lowed; the Coral Gar­den al­so de­mar­cat­ed,” Pitt said.

“Look at the con­di­tion of the ropes (at Pi­geon Point). It is the fail­ure of the au­thor­i­ty to main­tain these struc­tures that leads to chaot­ic be­hav­iour in the park.”

The THA re­cent­ly be­gan adding booms to the ropes at the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park to clear­ly de­fine the bathing-on­ly area.

Pitt said while jet ski op­er­a­tors are be­ing con­demned, they are al­so the first to re­spond dur­ing emer­gen­cies in the ab­sence of the au­thor­i­ties.

The vet­er­an said he re­called of­fi­cials from the De­part­ment of Fish­eries con­duct­ing safe­ty checks be­fore reef boats were al­lowed to set sail.

“These guys are still get­ting paid but they not do­ing their job.”

Mean­while, Jet ski own­ers Na­dia Yeates and her sis­ter Niya, of Aqua Par­adise on Pi­geon Point Road, said busi­ness has been slow since Jo­gie’s death. They said the in­junc­tion stop­ping jet ski op­er­a­tions at Pi­geon Point will hurt their rev­enue fur­ther.

Na­dia said, “I don’t think ban­ning jet skis is the way for jus­tice. The per­son they ar­rest­ed is out (re­leased pend­ing fur­ther in­quires)...This is hard on us. This is our source of in­come.”

Na­dia said they launch their jet skis out­side the Her­itage Park but they meet most of their cus­tomers at Pi­geon Point beach. She said be­cause of the ban, the num­ber of cus­tomers has de­creased by al­most 90 per cent.

Na­dia in­sist­ed, though, that there needs to be a lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in the in­dus­try.

“It have plen­ty teenagers op­er­at­ing jet skis now and some of them un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol, smok­ing weed. They ain’t aware how to re­al­ly op­er­ate a jet ski and give some­one a prop­er ori­en­ta­tion,” she said.

At Pi­geon Point on Fri­day, Cana­di­an vis­i­tor Francesca How­land and her son were en­joy­ing the wa­ter and their va­ca­tion. She said she felt safer know­ing the jet skis were not present.

Ger­man vis­i­tor Mi­ka Lutz said she saw jet skis zoom­ing past the ropes ear­ly last week and al­so wel­comed the in­junc­tion.