Kali­fa Clyne

Pay up or face le­gal ac­tion.That was the mes­sage be­ing sent yes­ter­day as near­ly 100 fish­er­men, or­gan­ised by Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea sec­re­tary Gary Aboud, in a let­ter de­liv­ered to the chair­man of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) Al­lan Bachan.Bachan is al­so the chair­man of the Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment Task Force (NEATF) ap­point­ed by the Min­is­ter of En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources to in­ves­ti­gate the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of sev­er­al oil spills in south Trinidad last De­cem­ber.

The spills re­sult­ed in large amounts of oil be­ing de­posit­ed on the shores of com­mu­ni­ties in the south­ern penin­su­la, sev­er­al peo­ple falling ill near the spill sites and an en­tire La Brea com­mu­ni­ty banned from cook­ing their own food.Fish­er­men yes­ter­day said those is­sues were not the on­ly im­pacts of the oil spill, which gained the at­ten­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia.Mara­bel­la fish­er­man David Heer­alal said the spill had re­sult­ed in a de­ple­tion of fish in the area."We are not catch­ing the amount of fish which we were catch­ing be­fore this. It is af­fect­ing us bad­ly and we want to know what is go­ing to be done about it," said Heer­alal as he stood among a group of col­leagues out­side the EMA of­fice on Eliz­a­beth Street, St Clair, yes­ter­day.

He added: "I am just here to give my sup­port to the cause. It is like we are be­ing ig­nored. Fish­ing is our job."It is where we get our salary and if we are not get­ting the vol­ume of fish as be­fore that is af­fect­ing our en­tire lives, our abil­i­ty to pro­vide for our fam­i­lies and sup­port our­selves."Aboud said in an in­ter­view: "The Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net must be re­spon­si­ble and if they are not we will en­gage the courts. This is se­ri­ous, we are hop­ing to avoid le­gal ac­tion but we are pre­pared to bat­tle."There is a prin­ci­ple in law and nat­ur­al jus­tice that if you de­stroy some­thing then you must pay for it and we term that cul­pa­bil­i­ty cre­ates li­a­bil­i­ty. If you dam­age me, then pay me for the dam­age. It is a com­mon and ac­cept­ed ar­gu­ment," Aboud said.

Aboud said the let­ter be­ing de­liv­ered to Bachan yes­ter­day had 13 sec­tions and in­clud­ed a re­port by fish­er­men that there was a drop in their catch rate of be­tween 40 and 90 per cent."The seis­mic sur­vey would have an im­pact but for­tu­nate­ly we col­lect­ed our da­ta be­fore the seis­mic sur­vey be­gan," he said.The seis­mic sur­vey in­volved un­der­wa­ter ex­plo­sions to help test for pos­si­ble oil and gas de­posits. The ex­plo­sions dri­ve fish away from the area.Aboud said as far as he was aware, the task force had not been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with fish­er­men."They con­tact­ed us about a week ago for an en­quiry and told us that every­thing we said would have to re­main con­fi­den­tial but we don't un­der­stand why it needs to be se­cret. This was a na­tion­al dis­as­ter," he not­ed.Aboud said the group of fish­er­men ex­pect­ed a re­sponse from the EMA and from the task force with­in ten days or fish­er­men would be send­ing a le­gal let­ter.

WHAT Fish­er­men Say

�2 Lat­est sur­vey shows cat­a­stroph­ic drop in Gulf of Paria catch rates.

�2 Cab­i­net's veil of se­cre­cy ought to be lift­ed.

�2 Sev­er­al species of fish are dy­ing, while the pub­lic is be­ing mis­led

�2 Com­pen­sa­tion for fish­er­men stopped on April 8, while sick fish con­tin­ue to wash ashore

�2 Species move in and out of the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed "red zone dis­as­ter area."

�2 Tidal move­ments re­move the ev­i­dence.

�2 Petrotrin's failed main­te­nance and un­pre­pared emer­gency re­sponse has cre­at­ed cul­pa­bil­i­ty and li­a­bil­i­ty.