On the eve of Lent, thou­sands of dead fish have once again start­ed to wash ashore dai­ly since Jan­u­ary 31, on the beach­es of La Brea. These are the same beach­es where Petrotrin used Corex­it 95 in re­sponse to its mas­sive oil spills.

There is a di­rect and un­de­ni­able cor­re­la­tion be­tween the Petrotrin oil spill of De­cem­ber 2013 in this def­i­nite area, the Corex­it 9500 which was used in this def­i­nite area, and the hun­dreds of thou­sands of sick and dy­ing fish which are wash­ing ashore al­most dead on­ly in this area.

Corex­it 95 emul­si­fies petro­chem­i­cals which then eas­i­ly en­ter in­to the food chain of which hu­mans are at the top. In­gest­ed petro­chem­i­cals will kill all crea­tures in­clud­ing us, hu­mans.

FFOS has dived and un­cov­ered Corex­it 95/petro­chem­i­cal sub­merged in the nearshore ma­rine area. FFOS has al­so lo­cat­ed large quan­ti­ties of Corex­it 95 lodged on­shore un­der the sand where chil­dren play in La Brea. Why has the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs, IMA and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, EMA nev­er con­sult­ing with us as to where these lo­ca­tions are?

In the last week the tides and winds have changed and strong gales are now blow­ing from the west. These west­er­ly winds have re­versed the tidal move­ments. When­ev­er the tidal move­ment changes the Corex­it 95 be­comes dis­lodged/ex­posed and we have ma­jor fish kills.

The un­in­formed ar­gue that these fish are be­ing dumped as by-catch dis­card but on Thurs­day, mem­bers of the me­dia saw for them­selves that many of the poi­soned and dy­ing fish that were wash­ing up were still alive.

This is not the first time. An­nu­al­ly we have in ex­cess of six ma­jor fish kills on­ly in this spe­cif­ic "Red Zone" area. Re­gret­ful­ly, the past Gov­ern­ment did noth­ing to help, and smoth­ered every in­ves­tiga­tive re­port.

FFOS is ap­peal­ing to the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture to make pub­lic the mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary in­ves­tiga­tive task force re­port. This re­port to date has not been shared with the pub­lic and re­mains se­cret­ly locked away be­hind closed doors.

What is se­cret about pub­lic health? Ei­ther the fish is safe to eat or it is not. The mere fact that the re­port re­mains hid­den is a sug­ges­tion, if not a de­fin­i­tive in­di­ca­tor, that some­thing is dan­ger­ous­ly wrong. This is too se­ri­ous a mat­ter for us to turn our eyes! If fish are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with can­cer-caus­ing agents, then the pub­lic health is at stake and our 8,000-plus Gulf of Paria stake­hold­ers will be fur­ther de­prived of their sole livli­hood.

This mat­ter can no longer be treat­ed as a pri­vate is­sue. The Gov­ern­ment must deal with this as an En­vi­ron­men­tal State of Emer­gency now.

Ter­rence Bed­doe,

Pres­i­dent,

Gary Aboud,

Sec­re­tary,

FFOS