Kevon Felmine

The skies were clear and the breeze was cool, but there was noth­ing re­lax­ing about walk­ing along the La Brea shore­line yes­ter­day, as the stench of rot­ting fish car­cass­es and the mas­sive flocks of cor­beaux lin­ger­ing about had res­i­dents both sick and scared.Af­ter wak­ing up yes­ter­day to a foul odour in their com­mu­ni­ty, they found their beach­es crowd­ed with the birds feast­ing on dead mul­lets and moon­shines, which were lit­tered across the beach.

At about 9 am, res­i­dents bore plac­ards in protest of their woe­ful sit­u­a­tion, hope­ful that Gov­ern­ment would bring some re­lief to the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty, which has al­ready suf­fered through last De­cem­ber's Petrotrin oil spill dis­as­ter.Spokes­woman for the res­i­dents, Oneca Branker-Show­ers, said they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing nau­sea and di­ar­rhoea due to the stench of dead fish, which have been wash­ing ashore since last week Sat­ur­day.

Hold­ing Petrotrin re­spon­si­ble, be­cause of its con­tro­ver­sial use of Corex­it 9500 dis­per­sant dur­ing the oil spill cleanup, she said the dead fish were caus­ing more suf­fer­ing."The smell is very aw­ful and I have been get­ting di­ar­rhoea be­cause of the stench. I have no kids, but chil­dren in the area have been vom­it­ing and get­ting di­ar­rhoea," she said.

"I be­lieve it is due to the chem­i­cals that were used to clean up the oil spill. It is prob­a­bly the Corex­it 9500 that is caus­ing this. We are still ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ards day af­ter day, night af­ter night and it is very un­com­fort­able liv­ing here these days."Months af­ter the oil spill and the beach­es and man­groves have not been com­plete­ly cleaned and we still have fumes now and again when the oil comes up from un­der the seabed."

She added, "If you walk along the shore­line you will see spots of oil still com­ing up. There is al­so a canal at Carat Shed Beach with oil in it and this gives off fumes."Al­though a hand­ful of res­i­dents raked up the dead fish in­to heaps, the high tide washed up more fish."From oil fumes to dead fish fumes. La Brea peo­ple are peo­ple too, we have rights," Avianne Rankin shout­ed as she held on­to a plac­ard.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tre for Bi­o­log­i­cal Di­ver­si­ty, dis­per­sants break down oil in­to small droplets. It al­so push­es the oil residue be­low the sur­face, cre­at­ing a tox­ic en­vi­ron­ment for fish by re­leas­ing harm­ful oil break-down prod­ucts in­to the wa­ter.Petrotrin had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter, but ac­cord­ing to head of Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, George Com­mis­siong, the com­pa­ny is still await­ing test re­sults.

He said via e-mail: "Fur­ther to re­ports of dead fish along the beach­es in La Brea, our HSE per­son­nel vis­it­ed the beach­es and took sam­ples of the car­cass­es."The car­cass­es have since been sent for in­de­pen­dent test­ing in or­der to de­ter­mine the cause of death. The re­sults have not been re­ceived."While the res­i­dents have blamed the com­pa­ny and the re­cent oil spill for the fish kill, this has not yet been es­tab­lished."

More species of fish­es found

Ini­tial­ly, most of the dead fish were sus­pect­ed to be mul­lets and salmon, but ac­cord­ing to fish­er­man Ja­son James, bro­chet, tor­rot and moon­shines were be­ing killed as well. Now, the ques­tion for fish­er­men is whether or not their catch­es are safe for con­sump­tion."The amount of fish we are see­ing on the beach here and no­body is get­ting a re­sponse as to whether the fish in the sea are good for hu­man con­sump­tion or not.

"We need to know ex­act­ly what is tak­ing place with the fish: whether it is safe to fish or to eat be­cause this is a fish­ing vil­lage and a lot of peo­ple de­pend on fish­ing to eat."