Yvonne Webb

Close to 400 pounds of dead fish has once again washed up on the shores at Point Sable and Carat Shed beach­es, La Brea, spark­ing fear among res­i­dents that what ever caused their death could al­so af­fect them.

The find has pro­pelled pres­i­dent of the La Brea Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion, Alvin La Bor­de, to once again plead with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) to come clean with the re­sults of tests con­duct­ed in the past and say what was caus­ing the fish kill to con­tin­ue.

Speak­ing at Carat Shed beach yes­ter­day, La Bor­de said fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of car­cass­es of a bot­tle-nose dol­phin and oth­er ma­rine life on the beach last Au­gust, nu­mer­ous sam­ples were tak­en but the re­sults were nev­er re­vealed.

"Ba­si­cal­ly the same thing is hap­pen­ing again. A lot of dif­fer­ent species of fish is wash­ing ashore and it is a cause for se­ri­ous con­cern.

"What is killing the fish could be af­fect­ing hu­man be­ings in some way. We want to know if this fish kill is as a re­sult of some sort of chem­i­cal be­ing dumped in the sea be­cause it does not hap­pen through­out the year."

He said dead fish first start­ed sur­fac­ing fol­low­ing the Petrotrin oil spill two years ago but did not be­lieve that was re­spon­si­ble for the present sit­u­a­tion. He said there were a lot of com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing around the Gulf of Paria and tox­i­c­i­ty lev­els in the wa­ter must be test­ed and re­vealed so it could be cor­rect­ed.

La Bor­de said since the new wave of fish kill start­ed on Sun­day, "I con­tact­ed the EMA and they as­sured me they would be get­ting in touch with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and come down here to do some test­ing."

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives were yet to ar­rive, he said.A trustee with the fish­ing as­so­ci­a­tion, Wayne Hen­ry, ques­tioned what sense it made to test sam­ples when the re­sults re­mained hid­den.

"Fish­er­men from Ota­heite, Clax­ton Bay, do night fish­ing on these beach­es. When they throw their nets in­to the sea chances are some of the sick fish could get caught up in the nets and they could sell these to un­sus­pect­ing cus­tomers who could die and no­body will know what killed them be­cause some of the half dead ones look good. Fish­er­men want a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what is caus­ing this fish kill," Hen­ry said.

La Bor­de ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the re­sponse of the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives for La Brea, in­clud­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor and MP Nicole Olivierre.He said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been try­ing to arrange a meet­ing with Olivierre, who is al­so the En­er­gy Min­is­ter, since last year with no suc­cess.

"We have asked for sev­er­al meet­ings with Miss Olivierre and the last re­sponse we got from her sec­re­tary is that the ear­li­est avail­able date is the end­ing of Feb­ru­ary," La Bor­de said.