The Gulf of Paria will be­come a tox­ic dead zone if thick crude is not vac­u­umed from the ocean floor be­fore Petrotrin be­gins its un­der­wa­ter seis­mic sur­veys, pres­i­dent of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud warned yes­ter­day.Aboud made the claim as he ac­cused Petrotrin of try­ing to cov­er up the mag­ni­tude of the mas­sive oil spill which has wreaked hav­oc on plant, hu­man and ma­rine life along the south-west­ern penin­su­la since De­cem­ber 21.

The 11 oil spills, some of which Petrotrin of­fi­cials sus­pect are acts of sab­o­tage, have start­ed spread­ing to the Oropouche man­groves, Aboud said yes­ter­day. He ex­plained that fish­er­men as far as Co­corite have re­cent­ly been pick­ing up oil on their fish­ing spools.

Say­ing the oil slick was now mov­ing north­wards, Aboud called on Petrotrin to im­me­di­ate­ly stop all seis­mic sur­veys in the Gulf un­til all the oil is cleaned from the ocean floor. Ex­plain­ing the move­ment of the tidal cur­rents, Aboud said the wa­ter flows in a cir­cu­lar clock­wise and an­ti-clock­wise man­ner."This is called a gyre. It ap­pears now that oil is com­ing in­to Ota­heite and al­so in­to the Oropouche man­groves," he said.

A gyre in oceanog­ra­phy is any large sys­tem of ro­tat­ing ocean cur­rents, par­tic­u­lar­ly those in­volved with large wind move­ments.Aboud ex­plained that on Old Year's Night, sev­en fish­er­men from Co­corite re­port­ed that oil and tar caught on their spools while they were bank­ing."We knew this was go­ing to hap­pen," he said.

"We are not try­ing to cause a pan­ic, but when you are trawl­ing, you have a net drag­ging at the bot­tom of the ocean. Trawl­ing is al­so used when there is a line in wa­ter float­ing at a spe­cif­ic dis­tance. Some­times a fish­er­man will use a met­al spool with a hook. This is called tow­ing and many peo­ple who are tow­ing say there is thick oil on the seabed."He said the chem­i­cals used by Petrotrin in the clean-up op­er­a­tions had caused the oil to sink.

"We have asked Petrotrin what kind of dis­per­sant they are us­ing and we are yet to get an an­swer. With the bat­ter­ing of the waves, the oil will co­ag­u­late and sink," Aboud said."It is will sti­fle ma­rine life. The gulf could be­come a dead zone if they don't clear the oil that has sunk."He claimed that Petrotrin was starved of crude for its re­fin­ery and this was why the com­pa­ny was in­sist­ing that it want­ed to be­gin its Ocean Bot­tom Ca­ble (OBC) seis­mic sur­vey.

He al­so said his team was keep­ing a close eye on the seis­mic ship to en­sure that sur­veys are not ex­e­cut­ed."If they at­tempt to do any seis­mic test­ing we will have to take what­ev­er ac­tion is nec­es­sary to pro­tect plant and ma­rine life. Fish­ing is our liveli­hood," Aboud said.Mean­while, Petrotrin, in a state­ment, said there is no con­clu­sive sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that the sur­vey will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on fish­eries.

Petrotrin said the sur­vey, which will be con­duct­ed in Petrotrin's Trin­mar and North Ma­rine Ar­eas in the Gulf of Paria, once start­ed will con­tin­ue for five months, with op­er­a­tions tak­ing place con­tin­u­ous­ly 24 hours per day.The oil com­pa­ny as­sured that the tech­nol­o­gy will utilise the dis­charge of com­pressed air to gen­er­ate puls­es for record­ing and no ex­plo­sives will be used.