We once again write to record the lack of any Coast Guard sur­veil­lance on the north coast of Trinidad while every imag­in­able il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty oc­curs.We re­fer to one such il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, name­ly the dev­as­tat­ing shrimp trawl­ing which con­tin­ues to scrape the ocean beds leav­ing death and an ocean­ic waste­land in its wake, de­stroy­ing the ocean's ju­ve­niles and habi­tat, and which has been "likened to dy­na­mite fish­ing in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty" by the World Re­sources In­sti­tute in their State of the World Re­port.

On March 25, a shrimp trawler was first ob­served drag­ging its nets at day­light off the coast of Blan­chisseuse, and con­tin­ued all day long de­spite sev­er­al re­ports to the coast guard made by del­e­gates of this or­gan­i­sa­tion.We are not aware of any vis­i­ble Coast Guard in­ter­ven­tion. Why?On the north coast, trawl­ing is per­mit­ted by reg­u­la­tions which are al­most two decades old, and yet why is the Coast Guard no­tice­ably ab­sent?

The reg­u­la­tions are very clear. Trawl­ing is not per­mit­ted:

–at any time oth­er than from No­vem­ber 15 to Jan­u­ary 15

–east of Saut D' eau Is­land

–un­der cov­er of dark­ness, and

–in­side of two nau­ti­cal miles from point to point.

We are in March, a full two months af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the leg­is­lat­ed pe­ri­od for the closed sea­son. These trawlers, like oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, are free to op­er­ate with im­puni­ty. Why?

When the agree­ment was signed, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) and all fish­ery stake­hold­ers agreed to a one-strike-out clause which is that if a sin­gle shrimp trawler vi­o­lat­ed the reg­u­la­tions on a sin­gle in­stance, and was suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed, then all shrimp trawl­ing on the north coast would be banned in­def­i­nite­ly.

To date, de­spite con­stant re­port­ed and record­ed vi­o­la­tions, on­ly on one oc­ca­sion has a sin­gle shrimp trawler ever been fined, and yet the last gov­ern­ment did not ho­n­our its one-strike-out agree­ment, in law, to ban these ma­rine de­stroy­ers. Why?

We ap­peal to the Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj to con­sid­er the de­plet­ed state of the fish­ery, and to ban shrimp trawlers the same way that Be­lize and Venezuela have. To­day, the shrimp trawlers have over­fished to the point where we do not even have shrimp, so what will our mi­gra­to­ry red fish eat? Sand is not ed­i­ble. It is not too late for the en­light­ened lead­er­ship of sci­ence and a bril­liant min­is­ter. Why is the Fish­eries Di­vi­sion mov­ing so slow?

Part of the prob­lem is that the law it­self frus­trates the Coast Guard be­cause the law on­ly per­mits an ar­rest if the Coast Guard ves­sel can board the of­fend­ing ves­sel while it is drag­ging the seabeds with its tick­ler chains. The trawlers know this, so they sim­ply keep an eye out for any ap­proach­ing Coast Guard ves­sel which may have ex­it­ed from the first Bo­ca and en­tered the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the north coast.

For over a decade FFOS has pro­posed the sim­ple amend­ment to al­low the Coast Guard to sub­mit to the court GPS read­ings tak­en from its own air­craft fly­ing over­head.

Mr Ma­haraj, shrimp trawlers are be­ing banned all over the world. There is too much to lose and too many have suf­fered loss­es from this un­sus­tain­able dev­as­ta­tion. There are tens of thou­sands who work at sea, and over a mil­lion who need fresh fish, yet on­ly a few hun­dred are in­volved in the shrimp fish­ery. Please, do not al­low this to con­tin­ue.While we wait, many suf­fer.

Gary Aboud

Ce­cil Mc Lean

Ter­rence Bed­doe