Al­most two years ago Petrotrin was re­spon­si­ble for a ma­jor oil spillage in the Gulf of Paria, once the food bas­ket of the na­tion and source of liveli­hood for thou­sands of fish­ers. The spill re­sult­ed in the death and wash­ing ashore of tens of thou­sands of fish and hun­dreds of birds. At that time, FFOS al­leged that the in­ap­pro­pri­ate use of chem­i­cal dis­per­sants ex­ac­er­bat­ed the tox­ic im­pact of the spill.

We al­so ar­gued that the Corex­it 9500 used would be­come lodged in the man­grove root sys­tem and that when the rains came again, it would be re­leased back in­to the nearshore wa­ters re­sult­ing in the death of more fish and birds.

The rains are here now which could have the ef­fect of flush­ing the Point Sabre man­grove in La Brea again.

Lo­cal fish­ers have once again be­gun to re­port dead fish and shore birds wash­ing on­to Point Sable and Car­rot Shed Beach.

On Fri­day morn­ing, dead pel­i­cans, cor­beaux and hun­dreds of fish were washed ashore.

Af­ter the spill, it was wide­ly ex­pect­ed that the prime min­is­ter would have made pub­lic the re­port of a spe­cial­ly for­mu­lat­ed na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal task force, an in­ves­tiga­tive team tasked with eval­u­at­ing Petrotrin's re­sponse to the spill as well as its po­ten­tial and resid­ual im­pact.

FFOS has, un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, re­quest­ed copies of the Re­port of the Task Force. To date, the Gov­ern­ment has re­fused to sup­ply such.

The re­cent spills make it im­per­a­tive that the re­port be­come pub­lic knowl­edge. FFOS is on­ly con­cerned as to what the re­port said and whether it sheds light on the on­go­ing fi­as­co of dead crea­tures in La brea and pos­si­bly the wider Gulf of Paria.

Some 50,000 fish­ers and down­stream ven­dors de­pend on the en­vi­ron­men­tal in­tegri­ty of the Gulf. This is an un­want­ed lega­cy of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.

Ter­rence Bed­doe,

Gary Aboud,

FFOS