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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

BHP to investigate claims of damage to fishermen’s equipment in Tobago

by

Loyse Vincent
1452 days ago
20210723
ATFA president Junior Quashie

ATFA president Junior Quashie

Casandra Thompson-Forbes

Fish­er­men from both east and west To­ba­go are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to ar­bi­trate on their be­half, af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing thou­sands of dol­lars worth of loss­es dur­ing the first week of a geo­sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey be­ing done by BHP Bil­li­ton off the coast of To­ba­go.

The fish­er­men say they were in­formed that the sur­vey would be done on the south­ern coast of the is­land. But they claim the BHP Bil­li­ton fleet passed on the north­ern coast, caus­ing sev­er­al fish­er­men to flee to safe­ty af­ter find­ing them­selves di­rect­ly in the path of the ex­er­cise.

Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said dam­age claims are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion vice pres­i­dent Ju­nior Quashie said they felt the com­pa­ny was be­ing disin­gen­u­ous.

“They sent out a nav­i­ga­tion­al warn­ing stat­ing that the rig was sup­posed to leave Drag­on Mouth in Port-of-Spain and pass south of To­ba­go and go up to east of To­ba­go. It did not, it came west and cre­at­ed a lot of dam­ages to fish­er­men’s equip­ment, three boats in the fleet and a chase boat and we saw them.”

Sev­er­al fish­er­men came for­ward to give per­son­al ac­counts of their loss­es. One of them, Kem­ba Lawrence, said he has been a fish­er­man for 15 years and fish­ing is his on­ly means of earn­ing an in­come.

“I’ve lost at least eight fish pots and three fads (spe­cial­ly-de­signed sub­merged traps used to at­tract fish) and ex­act­ly where my fad was an­chored, the ship passed in that di­rec­tion. They are no longer there, I checked yes­ter­day af­ter see­ing the ship pass in the ar­eas ear­li­er this week and I nev­er had that prob­lem be­fore.”

Nigel Nichols, of the Crown Point area, said he lost sev­en fish­ing pots af­ter the BHP Bil­li­ton fleet passed through the wa­ters off the Caribbean Sea. He said the pots, which cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1,000 to con­struct, usu­al­ly earn him $3,000 when he gets a com­plete haul.

“Day be­fore yes­ter­day when the rig passed up, I didn’t go to sea that day, so most of us sit down on the beach watch the boat pass up. To­day I went out, I didn’t see any from the sev­en.”

Cul­lo­den fish­er­man Shel­don Coop­er said he was dev­ast­ed, as he lost 16 fish­ing pots. He said he saw the no­tice but he didn’t see the need to re­move his equip­ment, as the sur­vey was sched­uled for an­oth­er area and the no­tice made no men­tion of fish­er­men re­triev­ing their equip­ment.

“This thing is crazy. Imag­ine be­ing out in sea with a reg­u­lar 25-foot fish­ing boat and then see­ing this big 300-foot boat head­ing in your di­rec­tion. All of my pots are gone and that is how I made a liv­ing – who do I com­plain to now? We beg­ging, we cry­ing, Lord, please help us.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Prin­ci­pal – Me­dia Re­la­tions of BHP Bil­li­ton Judy Dane for a com­ment on the claims made by fish­er­men.

In a state­ment, Dane said, “On Wednes­day, Ju­ly 21, BHP re­ceived re­ports from fish­er­folk about the pos­si­ble loss of equip­ment in­volv­ing a BHP con­tract­ed drill­ship and its sup­port­ing ves­sels off­shore Trinidad and To­ba­go. The ves­sels were en route in prepa­ra­tion for an ap­praisal drilling cam­paign at the Bon­gos 3 and 4 deep-wa­ter wells. BHP is in the process of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­ports and will com­mu­ni­cate with reg­u­la­tors and the fish­er­folk about any nec­es­sary ac­tions when the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete.”

Dane said BHP is com­mit­ted to safe op­er­a­tions and the safe­ty of peo­ple and the com­mu­ni­ties in which the com­pa­ny op­er­ates “al­ways comes first.”


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