Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fish­er­men in Ica­cos are call­ing for clar­i­ty af­ter the Coast Guard is­sued a di­rec­tive or­der­ing them to ply their trade with­in two miles from shore.

They said the or­der came on Fri­day, the same day all mem­bers of var­i­ous arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices were called out to du­ty.

The height­ened alert came amid re­ports from sev­er­al US news out­lets claim­ing that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump was plan­ning a strike on Venezuela—a claim Trump has since de­nied.

There was con­cern na­tion­wide, with peo­ple flock­ing to su­per­mar­kets to stock up, and some schools dis­miss­ing ear­ly.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Ica­cos—the far­thest com­mu­ni­ty on the south­west­ern penin­su­la, just 12 kilo­me­tres from Venezuela—fish­er­folk said they were not told when the re­stric­tion would be lift­ed.

“Yes­ter­day (Fri­day), around 12 o’clock, the Coast Guard called in all fish­ing ves­sels and told them to go in, that two miles off­shore they would be seiz­ing all ves­sels and lock­ing up all per­sons and car­ry­ing them to Staubles Bay. Two miles in the shore, we don’t re­al­ly hold no fish; we need to go two miles off the shore,” said one fish­er­man who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty.

An­oth­er fish­er­man, Vin­cent Ed­wards, ac­knowl­edged that while the Coast Guard is tasked with pro­tect­ing the bor­ders, the re­stric­tions are mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for them to sus­tain them­selves and their fam­i­lies.

Si­mon Alexan­der, how­ev­er, said he was not af­fect­ed be­cause he fish­es close to shore. He ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that some­times they do not catch any fish.

“We saw the Coast Guard yes­ter­day pa­trolling the bor­der, but they did not tell us any­thing be­cause we were on the shore­line,” Alexan­der said, adding, “It dras­ti­cal­ly af­fect­ing the oth­er fish­er­men be­cause they can­not get to fish. With no fish, no mon­ey; with no mon­ey, they can­not buy any­thing.”

Since ten­sions in­ten­si­fied be­tween T&T and Venezuela, how­ev­er, some fish­er­men said they have not been go­ing out to fish. Some fish­er­men were sur­viv­ing “day by day”, but they were un­cer­tain for how much longer they would be able to main­tain them­selves and their fam­i­lies un­der these cir­cum­stances.

“They (the Gov­ern­ment) could help us by bring­ing a lit­tle ham­per, gro­cery stuff for the fish­er­men. That could still help their fam­i­ly un­til we hear some­thing; we could go out to fish, but right now is plen­ty prob­lems,” an­oth­er fish­er­man said.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns by the pub­lic on Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar urged the pop­u­la­tion to re­main calm, say­ing she had no in­for­ma­tion about any im­mi­nent strike in the re­gion. How­ev­er, the fish­er­men are re­quest­ing that the au­thor­i­ties meet with them to ad­dress their con­cerns.

“Every night on this end of Trinidad have drones fly­ing, four or five drones, every night fly­ing over the hous­es. It have a big plane fly­ing; we don’t know what it come here to do. The Gov­ern­ment not telling us noth­ing. This plane fly­ing for days, drones fly­ing for weeks. We don’t know what we ex­pect­ing in our coun­try be­cause the Gov­ern­ment not warn­ing us; they not telling us noth­ing,” a fish­er­man com­plained.

The fish­er­men said the Venezue­lan Coast Guard ves­sels have been pa­trolling close to the T&T bor­der just off Sol­da­do Rock, but some­times they would en­ter lo­cal wa­ters. Just over a week ago, Ce­dros fish­er­men claimed they were chased by the Venezue­lan Coast Guard while fish­ing off the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of Ica­cos and Bon­nasse.

Mean­while, at the Coast Guard Base in Ce­dros, there were no vis­i­ble signs of height­ened se­cu­ri­ty. Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to the Coast Guard, but no re­sponse was forth­com­ing up to late yes­ter­day.

Re­la­tions be­tween T&T and Venezuela be­gan de­te­ri­o­rat­ing af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared sup­port for US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s de­ploy­ment of naval ships in the south­ern Caribbean as part of his an­ti-nar­co-traf­fick­ing cam­paign in late Au­gust.

The US has since de­stroyed sev­er­al al­leged drug-smug­gling ves­sels and killed more than 30 peo­ple. The Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly has since de­clared Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar “per­sona non gra­ta”, and Pres­i­dent Maduro has sus­pend­ed all en­er­gy agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sturge to probe fish­er­men’s claim; Says it may be a sug­ges­tion from an of­fi­cer

When con­tact­ed via What­sApp Mes­sen­ger, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said he would en­quire about the fish­er­men’s claim re­gard­ing the Coast Guard’s di­rec­tive, but as far as he was aware, no such in­struc­tions were passed down. He said it was pos­si­bly “mere­ly a sug­ges­tion from an of­fi­cer”, as­sum­ing that in­ter­ac­tion had oc­curred.