San Fer­nan­do fish­er­men aban­doned their fish­ing trips and threw away their catch yes­ter­day af­ter thick black crude oil con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed their fish­ing nets. The oil was spot­ted in the Gulf of Paria about five miles from shore.

Fish­er­man Dar­ryl Lee Afoon, 35, said he was fish­ing about five miles off King's Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, on Wednes­day night when he no­ticed a thick film of oil on the sur­face.He scooped up the oil with a con­tain­er but the spillage stretched over a half-mile ra­dius.

He said: "I im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed pulling up the nets. It was cov­ered in oil. I had to throw away the fish. It's about 50 pounds of carite that I threw away."No­body can fish in that area. This oil spill af­fect­ing us for the longest while. We saw some oil there re­cent­ly but yes­ter­day it was thick­er and black­er."

He al­leged that the oil ap­peared to be from Petrotrin's op­er­a­tions. An­oth­er fish­er­man, Chan Sookoo, said the pol­lu­tion was af­fect­ing their liveli­hood and called on the au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate.

The lat­est spill came two days af­ter thieves en­tered the un­se­cured Mount Pel­li­er Line Trans­fer Fa­cil­i­ty at North Trace, Cap-de-Ville, where they cut an eight-inch pipeline, caus­ing more than 20 bar­rels of oil to spill in the sea.

At the time, Petrotrin chair­man Khalid Has­sanali, said it was im­pos­si­ble for the com­pa­ny to se­cure all of its in­stal­la­tions.He said Petrotrin's as­sets were too vast to have se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers post­ed every­where, al­though the com­pa­ny must be vig­i­lant about its se­cu­ri­ty.

Chair­man of the San Fer­nan­do Fish­ing Co-op­er­a­tive Sal­im Gool said it was un­like­ly the Cap-de-Ville spillage had trav­elled up­wind.He ex­plained the winds were blow­ing east­er­ly so it was not pos­si­ble that the crude would spread north­wards. Gool said he did not know where the oil orig­i­nat­ed.

"This has a ma­jor im­pact on fish­er­men's lives be­cause the oil keeps away the fish. There is al­so an­oth­er reper­cus­sion be­cause when they use chem­i­cals to di­lute the oil, the rem­nants of the oil sink to the seabed and this af­fects the breed­ing grounds," Gool said.

He added that drilling op­er­a­tions had start­ed in La Brea and there was no col­lab­o­ra­tion with the fish­er­folk.Petrotrin's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Gillian Fri­day, was un­avail­able for com­ment yes­ter­day but an of­fi­cial in her de­part­ment said in­ves­ti­ga­tions would be done to de­ter­mine if there were any leaks in Petrotrin's fa­cil­i­ties.