Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Two To­ba­go fish­er­men de­fied the odds, sur­viv­ing four har­row­ing days strand­ed at sea in what many are call­ing a ‘mir­a­cle’.

Al­bert “BB” James and Ju­nior “Fle­hbeh” Thorne dis­ap­peared af­ter leav­ing Pi­geon Point Fish Port ear­ly Tues­day morn­ing to set three fish pots at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion.

But what be­gan as a rou­tine trip quick­ly turned in­to a life-threat­en­ing or­deal when their boat en­gine failed, leav­ing them pow­er­less and drift­ing in­to the ocean.

As hours turned in­to days and the men did not re­turn home, des­per­ate fam­i­ly mem­bers sound­ed the alarm, trig­ger­ing a search ef­fort led by the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA). The search in­clud­ed fish­er­men and sev­er­al agen­cies, among them the Coast Guard, Air Guard, and North Post Ra­dio.

As days passed, hope fad­ed for wor­ried fam­i­lies, con­cerned friends, and col­leagues. On Fri­day, res­cuers even con­sid­ered shift­ing their ef­forts from a search-and-res­cue mis­sion to a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion.

How­ev­er, as TEMA Di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, there was no sign of boat de­bris or any oth­er sol­id in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ing the worst out­come had been re­alised, so they kept search­ing.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, prayers were an­swered as the men were spot­ted by an­oth­er fish­er­man in an area com­mon­ly used to set pots. Ac­cord­ing to Stew­art, that was James and Thorne’s plan—know­ing that at some point oth­er fish­er­men would ven­ture to the area, they tied their in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed ves­sel to the pots to pre­vent drift­ing away.

Their on­ly oth­er con­cerns were the lack of food and wa­ter and brav­ing the weath­er.

As they were ush­ered to shore, scores of hap­py on­look­ers were on hand to wel­come them.

Stew­art said, “This suc­cess­ful sto­ry is one that could be re­ferred to as Pe­ter from the Bible, who walked on wa­ter. It’s a mir­a­cle at sea, and there­fore, we thank those who were in­volved in the search this morn­ing (yes­ter­day). We wish both men well and hope they re­cov­er nice­ly.”

Lat­er in the day, Sec­re­tary for Health, Well­ness, and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith Breb­nor con­firmed, “They were brought in­to the Ac­ci­dent & Emer­gency De­part­ment, Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11:25 am and were im­me­di­ate­ly at­tend­ed to. Both men are re­ceiv­ing treat­ment for de­hy­dra­tion but are sta­ble and in good spir­its. Fur­ther test­ing and ob­ser­va­tion are on­go­ing. Re­cov­ery so far is good and with­out com­pli­ca­tion.”

The fam­i­ly mem­bers, who spent days cling­ing to hope, were re­lieved and grate­ful for the safe re­turn of their loved ones. How­ev­er, they were too dis­traught to say any­thing fur­ther to Guardian Me­dia when con­tact­ed.

Now that the sto­ry has end­ed pos­i­tive­ly, there is hope that such an in­ci­dent does not oc­cur again. The TEMA di­rec­tor took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make an ap­peal for a greater fo­cus on safe­ty in the fish­ing in­dus­try.

“At this stage, we need to do bet­ter where safe­ty at sea is con­cerned. Just as you have reg­u­la­tions on the road­way, if I am to fly a drone, I have to talk to Civ­il Avi­a­tion. The same should ap­ply to a per­son go­ing out to sea or ply­ing their trade as a fish­er­man. They need to en­sure that they are prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, and there­fore, safe­ty at sea should not be left up to a fish­er­man to de­cide whether or not he or she should ad­here to those mea­sures.”

He likened it to fines and charges be­ing is­sued for peo­ple dri­ving cars with­out seat­belts or tak­ing a de­fec­tive ve­hi­cle on the road­way.

“The au­thor­i­ties now need to turn their at­ten­tion, from a gov­ern­ment point of view, to en­sure that this sec­tor is prop­er­ly gov­erned and man­aged,” he said.

He re­ferred to mak­ing it manda­to­ry for fish­er­men to have equip­ment such as GPS, VHF (Very High Fre­quen­cy) ra­dios, life jack­ets and flares when ven­tur­ing out to sea.

There is some agree­ment from the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) that more needs to be done to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia that while an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the in­ci­dent in­volv­ing two of his mem­bers, he is cer­tain that the use of GPS ra­dios, in par­tic­u­lar, would have been very help­ful in the search.

“All fish­er­men in To­ba­go should have a track­ing de­vice,” he said.

How­ev­er, Dou­glas wants the Gov­ern­ment to play a part in sub­si­dis­ing the pur­chase of the de­vices for the fish­er­men.

“Let’s en­sure that every sin­gle boat of fish­er­folk that goes out has a track­ing de­vice so that they can be lo­cat­ed—one, for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, and two, for health and safe­ty rea­sons. We call up­on the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure that this is en­forced.”