FFOS threatens strong action against Ministry of Agriculture

Secretary of the environmental group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), Gary Aboud, has threatened, that he, together with scores of fishermen, will take strong action against the  Ministry of Agriculture, if the new Minister, Jarette Narine, does not renew the Shrimp Trawlers Regulations in the Fisheries Act, which has long expired. The regulations, which prevents shrimp trawlers from trawling after the legal time frame, (November 15 to January 15) has expired and not been renewed within the legal time frame for the shrimp trawler season. As a result, Aboud said  trawlers are “raping” the sea and the livelihood of fishermen are under attack. He compared this to allowing rapists to run wild, saying just like without the law in place to protect the women in society, without the shrimp trawlers regulations, shrimp trawlers are “like rapists running wild on the North Coast.”

“While we speak, coastal communities are being raped by the ‘dynamite fishing’ of the ocean, dragging shrimp trawlers while the Coast Guard cannot act since Government has allowed the law to lapse,” he said. He said according to the World Resources Institute, Trinidad is known as one of the Caribbean countries which has the highest by catch discard, that is, for each pound of shrimp caught, approximately 14.73 pounds of juvenile specie (by catch) is discarded. “Fishermen are calling me up and bawling. The trawlers are not only pulling up all the shrimp and destroying the sea bed and  they are destroying the fishermen’s fishpots as well,” he said. Fishpots are what the fishermen use to catch red fish and the trawlers’ chains are destroying the pots as they drag the ocean bed. The FFOS Secretary explained that currently, red fish are breeding, but because they feed on shrimp, they are being picked up in the nets and are later discarded. Aboud said because the law has expired, there is no monitoring of shrimp trawlers out on the sea.

By law, they are supposed to trawl for 12 hours a day, but no authorities are monitoring if  they are trawling for much longer periods. According to Aboud, they are trawling 24 hours a day and as a result, the red fish species are being depleted, if not, destroyed. Aboud threatened that if Narine does not pass the regulations by next week, he, along with the affected fishermen, will take matters into their own hands. The Fisheries Act was passed in 1997, with a mandate to renew the regulations every two years. However, that changed in 2001, in which Government decided to renew the regulation every year instead of every two years. Aboud said like society, if there are no laws to protect its citizens, without adherence to the laws regarding fisheries and no systems in place to monitor certain actions, the resources of the sea will be destroyed.