Joshua Sur­tees

Busi­ness­man Gary Aboud, sec­re­tary of the Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) ac­tivist group, was ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day whilst protest­ing against seis­mic sur­veys at the Wa­ter­front, Port-of-Spain.Aboud was de­tained along with en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Cathal Healy-Singh and an­oth­er fish­er­man for dis­turb­ing the peace, af­ter po­lice asked Aboud to stop chant­i­ng through a bull­horn be­cause Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was said to be close by at the Hy­att, host­ing for­mer New York City po­lice chief William Brat­ton.

Aboud and oth­ers pro­ceed­ed, how­ev­er, to sing the na­tion­al an­them through the bull­horn and the three were prompt­ly ar­rest­ed and tak­en to CID, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.Dur­ing the protest, Aboud had re­ject­ed the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion's an­nounce­ment of a com­mit­tee to look in­to seis­mic sur­veys as a "de­lay tac­tic," and said the ac­tivists were prepar­ing to take the Gov­ern­ment and Petrotrin to court.

At the protest, the third of its kind, Aboud said his com­mu­ni­ty of fish­er­folk were pre­pared to take di­rect ac­tion to stop Petrotrin's next seis­mic sur­vey, due to be­gin on De­cem­ber 1 in the Sol­da­do fields."We are not go­ing to at­tend the com­mit­tee and we are not go­ing to ap­point any­body. We re­ject the com­mit­tee," Aboud told the T&T Guardian.

This was a ref­er­ence to the com­po­si­tion of the com­mit­tee pro­posed by Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, which will in­clude two sci­en­tists ap­point­ed by the fish­ing groups and 14 con­sul­tants from the en­er­gy sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment and UWI.Aboud felt this con­sti­tut­ed an un­bal­anced work­ing group."All of these are gov­ern­ment ap­pointees. We don't have any say in who is be­ing ap­point­ed," he said.

In­stead, he wants the com­mit­tee to com­prise three peo­ple: One sci­en­tist se­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, one by the fish­ing folk and a third se­lect­ed af­ter agree­ment be­tween the two sci­en­tists."We want a com­mit­tee to re­view the sci­en­tif­ic da­ta," Aboud told the crowd, "but stop the seis­mic bomb­ing un­til the da­ta is prop­er­ly analysed. The Gov­ern­ment says 'no, bomb out the sea and the com­mit­tee will ad­vise us at some time in the fu­ture.' That's no good. We want the seis­mic bomb­ing to stop."

Asked how he pro­posed to ef­fect change for the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty and fish stocks if he did not en­gage with the com­mit­tee, Aboud said: "How we are go­ing to af­fect change is we are go­ing to take the Gov­ern­ment to court. "The Gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to give ap­provals on De­cem­ber 1. Petrotrin has boast­ed that they are go­ing to start sur­vey­ing in the Sol­da­do fields for six months.

"We are not go­ing to al­low the seis­mic bomb­ing to con­tin­ue. We are just warm­ing up with this ac­tiv­i­ty. We have oth­er things planned. We do not in­tend to al­low the Gov­ern­ment to de­stroy the fish­eries."Asked if he was pre­pared to take di­rect ac­tion to stop the sur­veys, he said: "We are go­ing to take many kinds of di­rect ac­tion."

When it was put to him that the en­er­gy sec­tor brought in bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue com­pared to the thou­sands from the fish­ing in­dus­try, Aboud said: "We are not threat­en­ing the oil sec­tor. They have done 59 seis­mic sur­veys and they have done it all wrong. We ask them to start do­ing it right."The oil and gas that is in the ground is not go­ing to be lost. It will be there six months from now af­ter the EIA is done.

"We are sim­ply say­ing leave it in the ground un­til you can act prop­er­ly. The pre­cau­tion­ary prin­ci­ple is em­bod­ied by law in the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act and the Gov­ern­ment are ob­lig­at­ed to ob­serve it."Aboud said there were safer ways to do seis­mic sur­veys that did not af­fect fish stocks."You do stud­ies to de­ter­mine where the fish mi­grate, when and where they spawn, where the nurs­eries are and you have to stay away from those ar­eas. The Gov­ern­ment is not col­lect­ing da­ta."