Rhon­dor Dowlat

& Shane Su­perville

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard lost a mys­tery pirogue con­tain­ing the de­com­pos­ing bod­ies of five uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The ves­sel, dis­cov­ered near the Cas­sia plat­form on Sat­ur­day, is be­lieved to have slipped from a tow­line and sunk and is now pre­sum­ably un­trace­able.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Coast Guard PRO Lieu­tenant Khadi­ja Lamy ex­plained, “Ef­forts to se­cure the ves­sel were ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing due to its frag­ile con­di­tion.”

At 12.45 am yes­ter­day, the crew suc­cess­ful­ly at­tached a tow­line and be­gan trans­port­ing the ves­sel to­ward main­land Trinidad. How­ev­er, at 4 am, the tow­line sep­a­rat­ed in rough seas east of Ma­yaro and the ves­sel drift­ed out of sight, Lamy said.

“De­spite ex­ten­sive search ef­forts, we could not re­lo­cate the pirogue, which is pre­sumed to have sunk due to its se­vere­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ed state,” Lamy said.

The Coast Guard first re­ceived the re­port of the ves­sel at 2.22 pm on Sat­ur­day. A pa­trol boat was dis­patched and with help from near­by ves­sels, of­fi­cers lo­cat­ed the de­te­ri­o­rat­ed pirogue.

The ves­sel has drawn com­par­isons to a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent in May 2021, where a boat con­tain­ing African mi­grants was found off the coast of To­ba­go.

Lamy said, “The con­struc­tion of this ves­sel is strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that one, and it is rea­son­able to as­sume this case may be of a sim­i­lar na­ture. We re­main com­mit­ted to un­der­stand­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this trag­ic dis­cov­ery.”

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said it was un­for­tu­nate that the ves­sel’s de­te­ri­o­rat­ed state made it im­pos­si­ble for the Coast Guard to tow it for the en­tire jour­ney. How­ev­er, he com­mend­ed the Coast Guard’s ef­forts.

“In terms of as­sets, the Coast Guard were there and en­gaged in rea­son­able ef­forts to se­cure the ves­sel to bring it to a place.”

Hinds said mar­itime ex­perts had in­di­cat­ed that the type of ves­sel in­volved was de­signed for coastal ac­tiv­i­ty and not ex­tend­ed sea voy­ages.

Re­fer­ring to oth­er sim­i­lar events, in­clud­ing the one off To­ba­go, Hinds ex­pressed his sym­pa­thy to the fam­i­lies af­fect­ed.

The Coast Guard is urg­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion or sight­ings of the ves­sel or de­bris to con­tact their head­quar­ters at 868-224-3324.

Fam­i­ly of 2021 vic­tims still trau­ma­tised

Mean­while, Mayemouna Sow, the aunt of a Malian man who died aboard a ves­sel which was found in To­ba­go in 2021, says the dis­cov­ery of an­oth­er boat con­tain­ing bod­ies off Trinidad’s coast has re­mind­ed her of the fam­i­ly’s loss.

Sow’s 30-year-old nephew, Alas­sane Sow, was one of 12 mi­grants aboard a ves­sel which left Nouad­hi­bou, Mau­ri­ta­nia, west Africa, on Jan­u­ary 13, 2021 bound for Eu­rope. How­ev­er, To­ba­go po­lice and in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tors spec­u­lat­ed that en­gine fail­ure and ocean cur­rents led to the boat drift­ing to the Caribbean, miles off course from their in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion.

All 12 mi­grants aboard died.

The ves­sel and bod­ies were even­tu­al­ly found off the coast of Belle Gar­dens, To­ba­go, by fish­er­men on the morn­ing of May 28, 2021.

While the cause of death was not con­clu­sive ow­ing to the ex­tent of de­com­po­si­tion of the bod­ies, an au­top­sy at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre, St James, in 2023, said their cause of death was like­ly due to hy­pother­mia and de­hy­dra­tion.

Of­fi­cials from the Red Cross and jour­nal­ists from the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, through a pro­longed in­ves­ti­ga­tion span­ning dif­fer­ent coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, were able to con­firm Sow’s iden­ti­ty and his ori­gin af­ter re­trac­ing cell­phone da­ta and DNA test­ing.

Sow’s re­mains were in­terred at a Mus­lim Ceme­tery in Char­lieville.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the el­der Sow said, “I have read the ar­ti­cles care­ful­ly and am sad­dened by this trag­ic sit­u­a­tion that, un­for­tu­nate­ly, keeps re­peat­ing it­self. The dis­cov­ery of this boat with de­ceased in­di­vid­u­als is yet an­oth­er re­minder of this harsh re­al­i­ty.”

Sow said while the grief con­tin­ues, the fam­i­ly has tried to move on, as her nephew’s wife has re­mar­ried, but says the loss is es­pe­cial­ly great as her cousin Dem­ba Anne, al­so a Malian, dis­ap­peared months ago af­ter go­ing on a sim­i­lar jour­ney.

“We still have no news of him. These con­stant dis­ap­pear­ances, this scourge, con­tin­ue to deeply af­fect us. Even though we have moved on, it is still very painful to hear these sto­ries of peo­ple who, in search of a bet­ter life, take these dan­ger­ous paths—some­times suc­ceed­ing, but too of­ten at the cost of their lives.”