I am in­deed very pleased that the Fish­eries Or­di­nance has re­cent­ly been amend­ed to pro­vide the pro­tec­tion to our sea tur­tle pop­u­la­tion. It is my hope that the law will be ob­served by both our fish­er­men and by those poach­ers who kill the fe­male tur­tles when they ar­rive on our beach­es to de­posit their eggs. The law has to be vig­or­ous­ly en­forced and the penal­ties im­posed by mag­is­trates must be re­al­is­tic on con­vic­tion of of­fend­ers. The penal­ties must serve as a de­ter­rent to all would be poach­ers. One may be en­cour­age by the grow­ing aware­ness in the need to have ad­e­quate and en­forced Laws for the pro­tec­tion of our for­est mam­mals.

But what about our ma­rine food re­sources? Trawl­ing for shrimp con­tin­ues un­abat­ed in our ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters in­clud­ing in the Gulf of Paria. I am told that for every pound of shrimp caught, there are 14 pounds of "bye-catch" which is made up of the fin­ger­lings of carite, king fish, red fish, salmon and oth­er much sought af­ter species. It does not re­quire a sci­en­tif­ic study to ap­pre­ci­ate that this "Wastage" pos­es a se­ri­ous threat to our fish­eries re­sources and to the fu­ture of our fish­ing in­dus­try and must be brought to an end be­fore it is too late. It is long over­due that the Fish­eries Or­di­nance be amend­ed to in­clude laws to pro­tect from ex­tir­pa­tion our rapid­ly de­clin­ing pop­u­la­tions of lob­sters, conch, whelks and blue or callaloo crabs.

With­out ev­i­dence, I have a feel­ing that our fish­eries of­fi­cers have drawn this un­de­sir­able sit­u­a­tion to the at­ten­tion of the pol­i­cy mak­ers and have al­so sub­mit­ted rec­om­men­da­tions for the prop­er man­age­ment of our fish­eries re­sources. But noth­ing has been done and "over fish­ing" con­tin­ues un­abat­ed. Al­ready most of the lob­sters and conch which were pre­vi­ous­ly caught in rel­a­tive­ly shal­low wa­ters have all but dis­ap­peared and what now re­mains are ac­ces­si­ble on­ly to divers us­ing scu­ba equip­ment. Not on­ly is this has­ten­ing the ex­tir­pa­tion of what re­mains of our lob­ster and conch pop­u­la­tions, but it pos­es a se­ri­ous threat to the life of these divers ,as ev­i­denced by re­cent in­ci­dents which re­sult­ed in the loss of life in To­ba­go.

The Fish­eries Or­di­nance must be amend­ed now in or­der to pro­vide a closed sea­son for lob­sters. For conch and for whelks, to­geth­er with a min­i­mum size lim­it and a dai­ly bag lim­it for these im­por­tant food sources if the al­ready small pop­u­la­tions can be sus­tain­ably ex­ploit­ed. The law must be en­forced and se­vere penal­ties must be im­posed on per­sons found guilty in court of com­mit­ting an of­fence. Closed sea­son and oth­er con­ser­va­tion mea­sures are en­forced in most of our Cari­com part­ner coun­tries to pro­vide for the sus­tain­able use of their lob­ster and conch pop­u­la­tions. In 2009 the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca coun­tries signed an agree­ment for the pro­tec­tion of their lob­ster re­sources by hav­ing a uni­fied closed ea­son.

In Cen­tral Amer­i­ca the im­por­tance of lob­ster as a ma­jor food source, both for lo­cal con­sump­tion and for ex­port is recog­nised. I re­call that the tak­ing of sea eggs in Bar­ba­dos was pro­hib­it­ed for a num­ber of years in or­der to give the ex­ist­ing pop­u­la­tion ad­e­quate time to in­crease. All pow­er to my "smart Ba­jan" cousins. We in Trinidad and To­ba­go are just not that smart. "As de man say" "We have oil and gas and we have mon­ey. We can buy food." With re­spect to the Blue or Callaloo Crab. and we can all agree that the crabs be­ing of­fered for sale are get­ting small­er and that the price for what is avail­able is in­creas­ing.

This is be­ing caused by an in­crease in the de­mand for "callaloo crab," to­geth­er with the con­tin­u­ing loss of their wet­land habi­tat and very im­por­tant­ly by over hunt­ing. There is no closed sea­son for "catch­ing crab." There is no min­i­mum size lim­it, there is no dai­ly bag lim­it, and there are no con­ser­va­tion ar­eas for crabs. We, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, must act now to en­sure that all of our ma­rine food re­sources are no longer over-ex­ploit­ed, and are sus­tain­ably used to en­sure that these re­sources will con­tin­ue to be there for use in per­pe­tu­ity.

Ian Lam­bie

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