Aboud, no friend of the sea say fishermen

They are ascribing total blame on him for their predicament which they say now have them out of pocket all because of his public pronouncements which, according to them, is scaring away customers from their stalls .

The FFOS and some fishermen have not been seeing eye to eye on reasons being given as to why dead fish is turning up in the Gulf of Paria. Fishermen say they are responsible as they are the ones dumping the unwanted fish that keep washing ashore while Aboud argues that it is Petrotrin as they used Corexit in 2013 to deal with a massive oil spill in La Brea. Aboud said certain species of fish is not fit for consumption. Fisherfolk believe that because of Aboud, fish is not selling and they are convinced that once he is out of the picture, sales will soar once again .

“He (Aboud) is not a friend of the sea,” declared fisherman Desmond Belfast, a father of eight who spoke to Newsday yesterday at the Claxton Bay Fishing Depot. Belfast, Paul Lewis, Dillon Jaggernath along with vendors Elwin King and Saphina Lutchman are just a few who work out of the Claxton Bay port and are now grumbling and want Aboud to stop speaking .

“If he was a friend of the sea he would have acted differently,” continued Belfast who insisted that the dead fish that keeps washing ashore in the Gulf of Paria is the excess which has been disposed of by his colleagues. When Newsday visited yesterday, fishermen were busy throwing out unwanted fish that became tangled in the net back into the sea. That is the fish, they say, that the current takes down to La Brea and environs and could be seen floating or washed ashore. Recently, scores of dead fish began turning up in the Gulf of Paria and preliminary testing conducted by the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) revealed that it was not as a result of Corexit but either spoilt or unwanted catch by fishing vessels operating in the Gulf of Paria .

Jaggernath then told Newsday: “It has nothing to do with poison .

When the fish come thick and hook up in the net, we can’t keep it. Catfish, mullet, cro cro, herring, right now all that fish holding plenty, and when it come up thick, we have to throw it back in the sea .

When that set of fish hook up in your net in the night, you can’t take out all that fish because it have no market for it.” He further asked: “So what you doing with it? You give away what you could give away and you throw away the rest.” He then explained that it happens at every port and that all the fish thrown away is usually taken down to La Brea and surrounding beaches .

“The current does pull everything down there.” The boat men, the wholesale and retail fishermen said Aboud’s intervention is causing them to have to dump thousands of pounds of fish every day .

At a press conference on Thursday, Aboud again warned consumers that it was unsafe to eat certain species of fish stating that the Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) and EMA were not being honest with the public. Contrary to what was being said by fisherfolk, Aboud said the fish kill has nothing to do with dumping .

Jaggernath continued: “If he has concrete evidence that fish have poison that is all well and good but he has none. Aboud has other ways to earn a living, we have none and we have families to look after. Look at us, we are eating fish everyday and nothing is happening to us, nobody get sick, nobody in hospital. What is he doing to us.? Yesterday at 11.30 am, vendors Lutchman and King told Newsday that they were at their respective stalls for well over four hours and had only seen about three customers for the morning. Lutchman showed two coolers of fish which, she said, she will have to dump because of low sales .

When contacted yesterday, saying that he had to speak the truth, Aboud said he had but one message for the fisherfolk in Claxton Bay .

He said: “Tell them I say do not eat the fish. It has a very high level of contamination. I do not want them to die.” Aboud said instead of blaming him they should blame the agency which used Corexit which contaminated the water. “I did not pollute the water,” he said