Joshua Sur­tees

T&T's fish stocks can­not sur­vive the seis­mic sur­veys be­ing un­der­tak­en by Petrotrin and oth­er for­eign oil com­pa­nies, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of Co­corite Fish­ing Fa­cil­i­ty and Fish Mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion. In a let­ter to the T&T Guardian, Di­anne Chris­t­ian-Sim­mons al­so ac­cused Petrotrin, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Min­istry of En­er­gy of "hood­wink­ing" and "mis­lead­ing" the peo­ple of T&T with "half truths" about the ma­rine sur­veys.The sur­veys are the method by which en­er­gy com­pa­nies, like Petrotrin, search for oil and nat­ur­al gas re­serves be­neath the seabed.In the past 13 years, Chris­t­ian-Sim­mons says, 56 seis­mic sur­veys have tak­en place in the wa­ters around T&T. Each sur­vey can take be­tween one and six months, some­times longer. In a state­ment by Petrotrin last week in full-page ad­ver­tise­ments, the state-owned oil com­pa­ny de­fend­ed its method of sur­vey­ing, say­ing: "Dur­ing the sur­vey no ex­plo­sives will be used but a dis­charge of com­pressed air (will be used) to gen­er­ate puls­es for record­ing."It sug­gest­ed that method, which in­volved air­guns fir­ing blasts of com­pressed air to­wards the ocean floor, could ac­tu­al­ly in­crease fish­er­men's yields."In some in­stances," it says, "the fish in the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the emit­ting de­vice move to low­er depths re­sult­ing in an in­creased fish catch there­after."

Chris­t­ian-Sim­mons, an ac­tive fish­er for more than 20 years, de­scribed those claims as "ab­sur­di­ty" and "non­sense."Cit­ing re­search pa­pers com­piled by Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea, Gary Aboud's ac­tion group, which in­clude stud­ies car­ried out around the world by the Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN­FAO), she said that ev­i­dence from Nor­way, Cana­da, Aus­tralia and the UK showed far-reach­ing and long-last­ing ef­fects on fish in ar­eas where seis­mic sur­vey­ing was in op­er­a­tion."What they (Petrotrin) have not said," Chris­t­ian-Sim­mons says in her let­ter, "is that the noise lev­el gen­er­at­ed from the air guns used to fire off the com­pressed air ex­ceeds 250 deci­bels." She com­pared that to the deci­bel lev­el of a jack­ham­mer (120 db). A jet tak­ing off has a deci­bel lev­el of 150.

Noise trav­els fur­ther un­der­wa­ter, she said, and stud­ies by the UN­FAO showed that fish were shown to "scam­per for more than 50km" to es­cape the blasts.The sup­posed "in­creased catch" re­ferred to by Petrotrin, she said, was the re­sult of fish flee­ing the scene and be­ing caught in nets in their droves.The long-term out­come, how­ev­er, she said, was that the fish did not re­turn to their fa­mil­iar breed­ing ground.Mean­while, fish eggs and lar­vae could not es­cape the blasts and were killed, she said.Last week the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty protest­ed the ir­repara­ble dam­age they feel is be­ing done to their liveli­hoods.Petrotrin and oth­er com­pa­nies have paid out com­pen­sa­tion but not for the de­ple­tion of fish stocks.The com­pen­sa­tion is for the amount of time fish­ers are pre­vent­ed from fish­ing in the wa­ters where sur­veys are be­gin car­ried out. On Fri­day, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed that $77.3 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion had been paid to the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty be­tween 2010 and 2013 by five oil com­pa­nies.

Not all fish­er­folk­com­pen­sat­ed

The first com­pen­sa­tion was ap­par­ent­ly paid in 2011 by Cen­tri­ca En­er­gy and Niko Re­sources who car­ried out a joint ven­ture on the north coast.The com­pen­sa­tion was seen by the com­mu­ni­ty as not on­ly too lit­tle (far less, they say, than the $8,545 a month stip­u­lat­ed by the Min­istry of En­er­gy) but was al­so paid on­ly to those who have his­tor­i­cal­ly fished on the north coast.This, Chris­t­ian-Sim­mons feels, is not ac­cept­able.Fish­ers from the west coast, for ex­am­ple Port-of-Spain and Care­nage, whose fish­eries have been de­plet­ed over the past decade, have moved north to catch their hauls but were not in­clud­ed in the com­pen­sa­tion pay­out.How­ev­er, the fish­ing ac­tion groups have giv­en ex­am­ples, such as Co­corite fish­er­men be­ing paid just $3,600 each for the du­ra­tion of one sur­vey which last­ed five months, far be­low what the gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends.There is cur­rent­ly no ex­ter­nal sci­en­tif­ic body or agri­cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tion car­ry­ing out re­search in­to the de­ple­tion of fish stocks in the Caribbean or the im­pact of seis­mic sur­veys in T&T's wa­ters.