St Pe­ter's Day–flash­back

The sound of the seashell be­ing blown re­peat­ed­ly echoed through­out the vil­lage and rouse many from their sleep. This was no or­di­nary day; it was not the cus­tom­ary blast of the shell sum­mon­ing the fish­er­men to be­gin the day's work.

No one is look­ing for the beat­ing of fish on the wa­ter or for the pres­ence of birds feed­ing. No, to­day was not go­ing to be a day of toil­ing. To­day is June 29–St Pe­ter's Day.The sound of the shell her­ald­ed a day of fun–boat rides, food, drinks and dance.

Every­one who had not gone to work or school to­day ran to the sea­side to wit­ness as the priest bless­es the boats. The Catholic priest has a busy day; he has to go to all the fish­ing ar­eas–Or­toire, Ma­yaro and Guayaguare–it seems all be­fore 8 am.

What was the sig­nif­i­cance of St Pe­ter's Day? Nar­ine (2012) states that St Pe­ter was "the orig­i­nal Big Fish­er­man" (p 165).

To­day, how­ev­er, the mean­ing is in­signif­i­cant. No one seemed to care, what was im­por­tant is the free foods, drinks and the "lime" all sup­plied by the own­ers of fish­ing ves­sels. In the af­ter­noon, the fish­er­men took those who had nev­er been on a pirogue, for a boat ride.

The chil­dren smiled from ear to ear and the vil­lage drunks had their fill. Those who went to work vis­it­ed the fish­er­men's homes at lunch time or af­ter work. One got to eat and drink from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent places and a var­ied menu was guar­an­teed.

St Pe­ter's Day–present

That was then, now with poor fish yield, own­ers of fish­ing ves­sels who are more pros­per­ous in­vit­ed a se­lect­ed few to have a meal and a drink. The present parish priest is not very keen on bless­ing boats of own­ers who are not mem­bers of his con­gre­ga­tion.

Ma­yaro, Or­toire, Guayagua­yare

Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare nes­tled in the south east­ern part of Trinidad, a rapid­ly-grow­ing coun­try area whose shores kissed the At­lantic Ocean. Ma­yaro, Guayagua­yare and Or­toire were fruit­ful fish­ing vil­lages and were once de­scribed as "qui­et." Beau­ti­ful, idyl­lic set­ting which au­thor Michael An­tho­ny cap­tured in prose and ca­lyp­son­ian Gyp­sy sang about "ketch­ing" crabs. Not any­more, such win­some ad­ven­tures are on­ly mem­o­ries for some and maybe words on a tourist brochure. How­ev­er, be­fore this heavy re­liance on the oil in­dus­try, there was a thriv­ing fish­ing in­dus­try in Guayagua­yare.

Fish­ing then

Fish­er­men went out in their boats predawn with the sound of the conch shell to casts their seines; by 8 am they were back to pull in a seine full of fish. It was pic­turesque to see the half-dressed men pulling the ropes which dragged in the seine.

One end was tied to a co­conut tree to aid the fish­er­men as they pulled the seine ashore. The women and vis­i­tors lolled pa­tient­ly un­der the shade of the co­conut and al­mond trees await­ing the ar­rival of the fish.

Ven­dors wait­ed to get a good deal for the catch, while the re­main­der of the fish was loaded un­to tucks and trans­port­ed to be sold in var­i­ous parts of Trinidad. Fish­er­men freely gave fish to vil­lagers. Wil­fred Joseph, a fish­er­man, not­ed that through­out his 28 years as a fish­er­man he of­ten gave fish to many peo­ple who had noth­ing to eat (Nar­ine, 2012).

Once the fish was sold, the men were well paid in a man­ner unique to the fish­er­men.

The boat own­er re­ceived about 50 per cent of the mon­ey while the oth­er 50 per cent was di­vid­ed among the cap­tain and fish­er­men.

The cap­tain, the per­son in charge of the catch, al­so re­ceived mon­ey from the own­er, so the own­er of­ten re­ceived less than half of the take (E David, per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, May 20, 2016).

For many in Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare, fish­ing was more than a sport. It was a means of liveli­hood. Many hous­es were built, bank loans paid, ve­hi­cles pur­chased and house­holds main­tained through the fish­ing in­dus­try.

Fish­ing now

Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare has how changed from a qui­et fish­ing vil­lage to a bustling oil en­hanced com­mu­ni­ty. Many peo­ple are now em­ployed–di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly–by oil com­pa­nies in the Guayagua­yare area. So there was an ex­o­dus from the fish­ing in­dus­try.

As a re­sult, al­most on a dai­ly ba­sis, the cap­tains have to look for labour. A num­ber of boat own­ers are not fish­er­men as they are em­ployed else­where; they have be­come "busi­ness­men" as they em­ploy oth­ers to "work in their seine." Oth­er fac­tors are al­so con­tribut­ing to­wards the mori­bun­di­ty of the area's fish­ery.

Seis­mic sur­vey

In 2004, the fish­er­men be­came aware of seis­mic sur­vey­ing be­ing con­duct­ed by BPTT. This in­volved large boats drag­ging miles of ca­ble in the wa­ter be­hind the boat, two types of sur­vey­ing were tak­ing place, 3D and 2D. Those boats were equipped with air­guns and in­volve some type of hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tem. In­ter­mit­tent­ly the sys­tem ex­plodes un­der the sea.

The equip­ment has an au­di­ble range from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50-75 kms. This has the ef­fect of caus­ing se­ri­ous dis­tur­bance to the fish and ma­rine life pop­u­la­tion un­der the sea (E David, per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, May 20, 2016).

Ma­rine life de­pends sole­ly on sound for sur­vival and com­mu­ni­ca­tion (DOSITS; E David, per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, May 20, 2016) and of course, such vi­o­la­tion of their breed­ing ground may be detri­men­tal.

The fish­er­men are con­vinced that the de­creased fish out­put is due to the seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place as the fish move fur­ther away from the in­tru­sive sounds. The com­pa­ny us­es this sys­tem to search for oil and gas.

Af­ter form­ing two as­so­ci­a­tions (South East Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion and Guayagua­yare Or­toire and Ma­yaro Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion) and nu­mer­ous let­ters writ­ten to BPTT seek­ing the com­pa­ny's in­ter­ven­tion and recog­ni­tion of the plight of the fish­er­men, by 2006 boat own­ers were be­ing com­pen­sat­ed, for their loss of in­come.

Small­er catch­es

The un­der­wa­ter sur­vey­ing af­fect­ed all types of deep-wa­ter fish­ing such as bank­ing, tow­ing, trolling and fil­let as the fish­er­men now have to search in wa­ters fur­ther away and their small pirogues will make such a ven­ture haz­ardous. More­over, the var­i­ous fish­ing styles now em­ployed (fil­let, trans­par­ent nets, etc) con­tribute some­what to the fish avoid­ance of these wa­ters (E David, per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, May 20, 2016).

Seine fish­ing al­so has its chal­lenges as there are few­er men avail­able to help–not the same men each day–the fish­er­men have to take what­ev­er is avail­able as there are so many oth­er work al­ter­na­tives.

Stor­age fa­cil­i­ties

In ad­di­tion, sti­fling and killing the fish­ing in­dus­try in the Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare area is the lack of stor­age fa­cil­i­ties–both for boats and for the day's catch. A fa­cil­i­ty built in Or­toire about ten years ago of­fered ice on­ly, as there was no stor­age ac­com­mo­da­tion. It has since been twice van­dalised (BPTT re­fur­bished it once), and now no longer even of­fers ice and is be­ing used as a meet­ing place.

A jet­ty was built at Guayagua­yare to ac­com­mo­date the fish­ing boats, how­ev­er, due to poor de­sign and an ig­no­rance of the treach­er­ous wa­ters of the At­lantic Ocean, the fa­cil­i­ty has nev­er been used by the fish­er­men.

A lack of stor­age fa­cil­i­ties means that the fish­er­men have to sell their catch at what­ev­er price the ven­dors of­fer as the fish can­not be stored. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, many boat own­ers are con­tin­u­ous­ly at the mer­cy of thieves who steal their boat en­gines, as there are no se­cured places to store boats and en­gine.

Fu­ture...

What then is next? Is there hope for the fish­ery? David (per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, May 20, 2016) notes that the fish­er­men and the oil com­pa­nies must learn to co-ex­ist as they are both ma­jor stake­hold­ers of the sea. He sug­gest­ed that in or­der for the fish­er­men to be able to sur­vive, the com­pa­nies can as­sist the fish­er­men in ac­quir­ing larg­er boats so that they may go fur­ther out to sea where the fish­es have mi­grat­ed. More­over, prop­er fa­cil­i­ties for stor­age of the catch, moor­ing of the boats and stor­age of en­gines are an ur­gent ne­ces­si­ty in the area.

In the Plai­sance area there is an at­tempt by a vil­lager to pro­vide smoked fish, a thin hope that it can de­vel­op in­to a wider mar­ket; same is be­ing done at News Lands Vil­lage with some mea­sure of suc­cess. How­ev­er, one of the prob­lems is the lack of "boni­to fish" to pro­duce the item. This fish was once plen­ti­ful in the area, now it is in short sup­ply.

De Ver­teuil (2016, p A19) in com­ment­ing on T&T's fish­ery ob­served that our coun­try is un­able to feed its pop­u­la­tion as the in­dus­try "has col­lapsed un­der the weight of mis­man­age­ment...T&T has gone from be­ing a seafood ex­porter to an im­porter." A sad sit­u­a­tion, but giv­en the ne­glect, a true ob­ser­va­tion.

Ma­yaro Boys Sports Club as a stake­hold­er in the Com­mu­ni­ty wish­es to iden­ti­fy with the im­por­tance of the fish­ing in­dus­try to the com­mu­ni­ties of Or­toire, Ma­yaro, Grand La­goon, Guayagua­yare and the vil­lages in be­tween. From 1492 when those three Span­ish ships docked off the coast at Guayagua­yare, to present, fish­ing has been the main­stay of our lo­cal econ­o­my on the south­east coast.

Ma­yaro Boys Sports Club aims to raise the aware­ness of the over­all val­ue of fish­ing to our com­mu­ni­ties and keep that con­ver­sa­tion on the front burn­er of the needs for its im­prove­ment.

Our theme for St Pe­ters Day Cel­e­bra­tion 2016 was Fish­ing for Life, and the cel­e­bra­tion was held on June 26, at Plai­sance, Ma­yaro.

Ref­er­ence

De Ver­teuil, M (May 30, 2016).

Com­men­tary: Fish­eries, EU sanc­tions and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian, p A19.

Dis­cov­ery of sound in the sea (DOSITS) (2016).

How do ma­rine an­i­mals use sound?

http://www.dosits.org/an­i­mals/use­of­sound/an­i­mal­sus­esound/

Nar­ine, H (2012). Wifred Joseph.

In R Roop­nar­ine (Ed). He­roes of Ma­yaro (p 162-165).

Graph­ic Scripts Print­ing.

Wen­dell Perez

Ma­yaro Boys For Life!