Joshua Sur­tees

Af­ter more than a decade of pres­sure from fish­ing groups the an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, De­vant Ma­haraj, of a Cab­i­net com­mit­tee to ex­am­ine the im­pact of off­shore seis­mic sur­vey ac­tiv­i­ty on fish stocks in T&T came as some­thing of a sur­prise.

Giv­en the slow progress made in a year in which Ma­haraj, on Jan­u­ary 17, promised the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment ac­tivist group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) that he would ask Cab­i­net to as­sess the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact–fol­lowed in Ju­ly, by Ma­haraj con­tact­ing the group to tell them the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment had been re­moved from his purview and hand­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance–it ap­peared un­like­ly the Gov­ern­ment would step in.

On Sep­tem­ber 2, FF­SOS (front­ed by Gary Aboud) wrote to the Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and 16 oth­er min­is­ters urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to stop seis­mic ac­tiv­i­ty un­til an en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ment had been done.

The group had pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed the gov­ern­ment with what they saw as ev­i­dence of the dam­age be­ing caused. Back in 2010, they com­piled a 68-page book­let based on re­search done by the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the UN (UN­FAO) and in 2011 they en­list­ed the help of a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) sci­en­tist who sum­marised the find­ings of 64 stud­ies car­ried out around the world in­to the im­pacts of seis­mic sur­vey­ing.

The UN­FAO con­clu­sion in the fore­word of the 2010 dossier rec­om­mend­ed "the ur­gent need for the de­vel­op­ment of a strong­ly reg­u­lat­ed regime for the mit­i­ga­tion of seis­mic sur­veys and for fur­ther re­search so as to min­imise the im­pact on coastal com­mu­ni­ties and fish­ers."To the dis­may of the FSOS, the gov­ern­ment did not re­spond to the 2010 dossier.

No re­search has been done lo­cal­ly on the im­pact of seis­mic sur­veys on ma­rine life in the Caribbean, but Aboud feels that, re­gard­less of the lack of Caribbean re­search, the find­ings in places like Cana­da can be trans­posed to T&T."The same mack­er­el that swim in Cana­da come down to Trinidad," he said.

"The gov­ern­ment ar­gue that the fish in, say, An­tigua, might be­have dif­fer­ent­ly to the fish here. That's like say­ing hu­mans of dif­fer­ent races would re­act dif­fer­ent­ly if they were ex­posed to a pow­er­ful blast. They would re­act the same."Protests by the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties have tak­en place in Port-of-Spain, sup­port­ed by ac­tivist groups.

The groups are en­raged that 56 seis­mic sur­veys–last­ing months at a time–have been car­ried out by lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies in T&T wa­ters in the last 13 years. Fish­er­men have de­scribed their im­pact on fish stocks as dev­as­tat­ing.

A fo­cus of Aboud's ire is the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), which he ac­cus­es of "rub­ber-stamp­ing" agree­ments that al­low oil com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue us­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pro­ce­dure to search for oil and nat­ur­al gas. The EMA, he says, is ex­pos­ing a "loop­hole in the law, where­by if the EMA ar­bi­trar­i­ly de­cides that the im­pact of seis­mic bomb­ing is min­i­mal, then the work goes ahead." In Suri­name, Venezuela and Cos­ta Ri­ca, by con­trast, Aboud said EIAs are re­quired be­fore any ac­tiv­i­ty is al­lowed.

The EMA re­spond­ed to these crit­i­cisms with an ad­mis­sion that "fish with­in a cer­tain dis­tance of the air gun ar­ray are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the sound," and promised fur­ther de­tails in due course. In a state­ment to the T&T Guardian, the EMA said there are "ro­bust guide­lines to en­sure that off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties are con­duct­ed in a reg­u­lat­ed man­ner which up­hold the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment."

On 7 No­vem­ber, Ma­haraj, fol­low­ing a Cab­i­net meet­ing, an­nounced that a com­mit­tee would be set up to look in­to the ef­fects of seis­mic sur­vey­ing.Aboud ini­tial­ly wel­comed the an­nounce­ment, say­ing: "What the gov­ern­ment has done in recog­nis­ing that the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty has valid con­cerns is a move in the right di­rec­tion."

How­ev­er, he al­so voiced sev­er­al reser­va­tions and crit­i­cisms. The com­mit­tee he said was too lit­tle, too late, and should have been set up ten years ago. Re­search­ing the im­pact on fish stocks now that they have been di­min­ished, he de­scribed as "an oxy­moron."Lat­er he dis­cred­it­ed the com­mit­tee en­tire­ly, call­ing the com­po­si­tion of com­mit­tee mem­bers–which will con­tain a high­er num­ber of en­er­gy sec­tor con­sul­tants than fish­ing in­dus­try con­sul­tants–as "im­bal­anced."

He al­so called it a "de­lay tac­tic," and sug­gest­ed the com­mit­tee would take months to for­mu­late and be­gin meet­ing, in which time no mora­to­ri­um on sur­veys would be forth­com­ing.Aboud's stance that peo­ple in­volved in the en­er­gy sec­tor should not be in­clud­ed seems un­like­ly to pre­vail, how­ev­er, as the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion said rep­re­sen­ta­tives from en­er­gy com­pa­nies and the Min­istry of En­er­gy would be in­volved.

What oth­er re­search ex­ists?

The Fish­eries Di­vi­sion pro­vides da­ta on land­ed catch­es, which have been di­min­ish­ing in re­cent years (not sole­ly due to seis­mic sur­veys.) Ac­cord­ing to Za­heer Ho­sain, a Phd stu­dent at UWI study­ing ma­rine fish stocks, the da­ta ides not re­veal the "true pic­ture." He im­plied that the ex­tent of de­ple­tion could be worse, since the num­ber of ma­rine species caught and thrown back in­to the sea is nev­er record­ed, mean­ing the scale of dev­as­ta­tion to T&T's fish­eries is dif­fi­cult if not im­pos­si­ble to quan­ti­fy.

Anec­do­tal ev­i­dence, col­lect­ed by ac­tivists like Mark de Ver­teuil, re­veals sto­ries from fish­er­men who say they used to come back with ten buck­ets full of fish and now strug­gle to bring back one buck­et, de­spite us­ing mi­cro-meshed net­ting to catch small­er and small­er sizes of fish.The T&T Guardian con­tact­ed the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) to ask what re­search had been car­ried out on seis­mic sur­veys, but was told they had not done any re­search in terms of fish stocks.

De­spite what its name in­di­cates, the IMA does not fo­cus on the sea but on coastal and in­land fresh­wa­ters such as man­groves, swamps and beach­es, study­ing the ef­fects of pol­lu­tion and ero­sion.Re­search by oil com­pa­nies has tend­ed to fo­cus on larg­er sea crea­tures like whales and dol­phins, num­bers of which have fall­en con­sis­tent­ly over the past three cen­turies.It is not known whether seis­mic sur­veys have fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed the de­ple­tion of these cetaceans.

EMA RE­SPONDS

Last week, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Gary Aboud ac­cused the EMA of rub­ber-stamp­ing agree­ments al­low­ing oil com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue seis­mic sur­veys with­out con­duct­ing EIAs.In a state­ment e-mailed to the T&T Guardian the EMA re­spond­ed, say­ing:

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), in re­sponse to en­quiries about its Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance ap­pli­ca­tion process, re­it­er­ates that spe­cif­ic con­di­tions are set out as it re­lates to off shore seis­mic test­ing. This is done in full ac­cor­dance with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act Chap­ter 35:05.

All CEC ap­pli­ca­tions are screened us­ing a Stan­dard Op­er­a­tions Pro­ce­dure to de­ter­mine whether an EIA would be re­quired. Gen­er­al­ly, that de­ci­sion is based on the na­ture, scale and lo­ca­tion of a pro­posed ac­tiv­i­ty and whether the base­line en­vi­ron­men­tal re­cep­tors are known and the an­tic­i­pat­ed ad­verse im­pacts are well un­der­stood, are sig­nif­i­cant, and could be mit­i­gat­ed to with­in lev­els that would be con­sid­ered ac­cept­able.

The EMA notes that de­ci­sions by the Au­thor­i­ty with re­spect to the grant­i­ng of CECs can be chal­lenged in court if there is dis­agree­ment with any de­ci­sion and the Au­thor­i­ty guards its le­gal man­date with great in­tegri­ty.

With re­spect to the dis­tur­bance, dis­place­ment and detri­ment to the fish stock, there are re­search pa­pers on this top­ic. Some fam­i­lies of fish that oc­cur lo­cal­ly are more sus­cep­ti­ble to sounds eg the drums and croak­ers. It is al­so known that fish with­in a cer­tain dis­tance of the air gun ar­ray are neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by the sound. The EMA will be pro­vid­ing fur­ther de­tails on this top­ic in due course to en­sure that ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion on seis­mic sur­veys is dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the pub­lic.

The ac­tiv­i­ty of con­duct­ing seis­mic sur­veys is one reg­u­lat­ed by the CEC Rules and the con­di­tions in CECs are in­clud­ed to en­sure that the op­er­a­tors re­duce their im­pacts on the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Op­er­a­tors who hold CECs are al­so held ac­count­able if there is non-com­pli­ance with the con­di­tions.

The EMA stress­es that there are ro­bust guide­lines to en­sure that off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties are con­duct­ed in a reg­u­lat­ed man­ner which up­hold the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. The EMA is al­so ac­tive­ly in­volved in re­view­ing and strength­en­ing guide­lines for seis­mic sur­veys to im­prove the CEC process.