For the past sev­en months fish have been wash­ing up dead on the south west penin­su­la.The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs and the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty have (in er­ror) stat­ed that it is on­ly one specie of fish that is wash­ing up dead, and the death is caused by a bi­o­log­i­cal (nat­ur­al) agent, but they have not stat­ed if it is safe to eat the sick fish.Fish­er­man and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) has record­ed over 15 species of dead fish in the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed zone, in­clud­ing pel­i­cans and cor­beaux.

A month ago the quan­ti­ty of dead fish wash­ing ashore went down tem­porar­i­ly as the sand cov­ered the oil with the sea­son­al move­ment of the tides.Last week the tidal move­ment changed and the sand, which cov­ered the oil a month ago, be­gan to wash away.FFOS re­ceived sev­er­al re­ports of dead fish wash­ing ashore last week, and on Sat­ur­day June 7, FFOS vis­it­ed Sta­tion Beach in La Brea where we record­ed dead fish and a cor­beaux which washed ashore dead that day.FFOS be­lieves that the dead fish are be­ing caused from the resid­ual COREX­IT9500, which has been left on the beach­es and in the ocean beds by an un­car­ing Min­istry of En­er­gy/Petrotrin. FFOS has asked Petrotrin to clean up the oil spill, but the Gov­ern­ment and the oil com­pa­ny seem to be un­in­ter­est­ed or un­will­ing to en­gage in mean­ing­ful di­a­logue or re­spon­si­ble prac­tice. To date the IMA has not stat­ed if it is safe to eat the sick fish.

Al­so, on Tues­day morn­ing dol­phins washed ashore in Ma­yaro. The res­i­dents tried to put them back in­to the sea, but they con­tin­ued be­ing washed ashore.Are these dead dol­phins be­ing poi­soned by eat­ing fish con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by or­phaned Petrotrin COREX­IT and oil or are these beached dol­phins a re­sult of the seis­mic det­o­na­tions which are oc­cur­ring in our wa­ters?

Gary Aboud

Sec­re­tary,

FFOS