Pres­i­dent of the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion, Cur­tis Dou­glas, is call­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, hop­ing the new ad­min­is­tra­tion will fi­nal­ly bring an end to decades of il­le­gal fish­ing in To­ba­go’s wa­ters.

In 2022, fol­low­ing a re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium, it was re­port­ed that for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley raised the mat­ter with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley. Both lead­ers agreed to pur­sue dis­cus­sions through their re­spec­tive fish­eries de­part­ments. How­ev­er, To­ba­go’s fish­er­men say noth­ing has changed on the ground.

Dou­glas is now de­mand­ing ac­tion from the new Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect To­ba­go’s ma­rine re­sources.

“We be­lieve Venezuela must have a li­cence. And al­so the Ba­jans must have a li­cence,” Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia. “We’re just throw­ing it out as a max­i­mum base­line fig­ure of US $3,000 if they want to come in­to our wa­ters to catch our fly­ing fish. Be­cause right now, we are starv­ing for fly­ing fish.”

Dou­glas claims for­eign ves­sels from Venezuela and Bar­ba­dos are still be­ing al­lowed to en­ter To­ba­go’s wa­ters il­le­gal­ly, us­ing fish­ing lights that at­tract fly­ing fish and oth­er catch, leav­ing lo­cal fish­er­men with less and less every sea­son.

“They are still giv­ing them lights,” he said. “So we are say­ing that some form of rea­son­able, con­sid­er­ate pol­i­cy must be put in place. Be­cause the fish­ing in­dus­try, as it is, is a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar in­dus­try. And right now we are not get­ting the ben­e­fits.”

He wants the gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce a li­cens­ing regime and en­gage di­rect­ly with re­gion­al lead­ers on the is­sue, adding that any fu­ture ac­cess to To­ba­go’s fish­ing grounds must come with reg­u­la­tion and over­sight.

“If they want to come to our wa­ters to fish, they must have an arrange­ment and a meet­ing with the pres­i­dent and al­so the fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tion in Bar­ba­dos, and prob­a­bly Venezuela,” Dou­glas said. “We must sit down and agree that they have to get a li­cence to fish.”

He be­lieves Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the ex­pe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship to tack­le the is­sue diplo­mat­i­cal­ly, but says the time for de­lay is over.

“We know our Prime Min­is­ter is in­tel­li­gent and wise in her de­ci­sions. So we be­lieve she will meet with us to iron out a sim­ple prob­lem—just to en­sure that our min­er­als that bring mon­ey and pro­vide food to our peo­ple, we could sta­bi­lize it.”

Dou­glas in­sists it’s not about pol­i­tics, but sur­vival.

“We must put it right. If we have to build a bet­ter To­ba­go and a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go, we must do it hon­est­ly and fair­ly.”

He hopes the Prime Min­is­ter will re­spond soon and give the is­land’s fish­er­folk an au­di­ence.