Resh­ma Ra­goonath

The Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP), an in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment watch­dog, says it is mon­i­tor­ing with con­cern the fish kills that have been wash­ing ashore at La Brea.Christo­pher Corbin, UN­EP Caribbean Re­gion­al Co-or­di­nat­ing Unit, Caribbean En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme CEP, and As­sess­ment and Man­age­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Pol­lu­tion (AMEP) pro­gramme of­fi­cer, con­firmed in an e-mail to the T&T Guardian that the agency was keep­ing watch over the fish kills.

Three weeks ago, dead fish be­gan wash­ing ashore at Cof­fee, Point Sable and Sta­tion Beach­es, all of which were heav­i­ly af­fect­ed by the De­cem­ber 17 Petrotrin oil spill.

Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea sec­re­tary Gary Aboud has at­trib­uted the death of the fish to Petrotrin's use of the con­tro­ver­sial dis­per­sant Corex­it A9500 dur­ing the ini­tial days of the clean-up. How­ev­er, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has since said the pre­lim­i­nary re­port in­to the fish kill had re­vealed that the dis­per­sant was not re­spon­si­ble for the fish deaths.

Corbin, in the e-mail, said: "As a con­tract­ing par­ty to the Carta­ge­na Con­ven­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the Oil Spills Pro­to­col, we (UN­EP/CEP) have been mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion and are of course quite con­cerned with the im­pacts be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced, as re­port­ed in the na­tion­al me­dia in­clud­ing po­ten­tial im­pacts on liveli­hoods (fish­er­men), hu­man health and now through fish kills."

The Carta­ge­na Con­ven­tion, ac­cord­ing to the UN­EP/CEP Web site, "is a com­pre­hen­sive, um­brel­la agree­ment for the pro­tec­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment."Corbin, who is al­so at­tached to the sec­re­tari­at of the Carta­ge­na Con­ven­tion, ad­mit­ted that since the De­cem­ber oil spill and its im­pacts were es­sen­tial­ly in ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, the sec­re­tari­at could take no fur­ther ac­tion, "un­less it re­ceives a spe­cif­ic re­quest for some form of tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from our na­tion­al fo­cal point–the Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment."

He said the sec­re­tari­at would on­ly be ac­ti­vat­ed when the im­pacts were felt in neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and thus be­came a trans­bound­ary is­sue, so that "spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions of the con­ven­tion and the Oil Spills Pro­to­col will come in­to play re­quir­ing shar­ing of more spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion on the spill and the im­pacts."

He said the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs was recog­nised as one of UN­EP/CEP's spe­cialised agen­cies or re­gion­al ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tres for land-based sources of ma­rine pol­lu­tion, and would have the nec­es­sary ca­pac­i­ty to do an as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion and pos­si­ble risks, such as those from the fish kills.

Corbin said while UN­EP/CEP had not been for­mal­ly ap­proached by the T&T Gov­ern­ment for as­sis­tance, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with its UN­EP/In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IMO) joint Re­gion­al Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre for the Oil Spills Pro­to­col-based in Cu­ra­cao, it has pro­vid­ed rec­om­men­da­tions on ex­perts who could as­sist in the as­sess­ment process.

"This was based on an ap­proach by the Gov­ern­ment to the Re­gion­al Ma­rine Pol­lu­tion Emer­gency In­for­ma­tion and Train­ing Cen­tre for the Wider Caribbean (REM­PEITC-Caribe) Re­gion­al Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre (RAC)," he said.Corbin said he was not cer­tain if a di­rect re­quest was made from Gov­ern­ment or through the UN frame­work, the UNDP na­tion­al of­fice in Trinidad, or the IMO Caribbean ad­vis­er based in Trinidad.

Res­i­dent com­plains

Cof­fee Beach res­i­dent Oneca Branker-Show­ers, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian, said dead fish were still wash­ing ashore, in­clud­ing more species, such as cat­fish and moon­shine.Branker-Show­ers said res­i­dents were still en­dur­ing the stench of rot­ting fish along the shore­line at Cof­fee beach and rash­es have bro­ken out on her five-year-old nephew's skin and an­oth­er woman and her six-year-old son.

She lament­ed that no one seemed to care about the res­i­dents along the shore­line, be­cause no one had cleaned up the dead fish."We do not have a choice here. We have to take it and live with it. We have to eat as nor­mal. No one here will go and clean that. Who go­ing to go clos­er to that to in­hale that? No­body want to go there, they afraid to touch," she lament­ed."It's very hard for us. We do not know what is go­ing on, no one telling us any­thing."