Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FSOS) Gary Aboud is dis­put­ing the find­ings of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) about the fish kill in the Gulf of Paria.

Dur­ing a two-hour boat tour of the Gulf, which be­gan at the mouth of the Godineau Riv­er to the Aripero Wet­lands, with mem­bers of the me­dia yes­ter­day, Aboud said the thou­sands of dead fish­es seen at sea were fresh kill.

"We went on a mis­sion to ver­i­fy what the EMA?and the IMA said," Aboud said. "But we saw thou­sands of dead fish­es that have le­sions on them, they have burst blood ves­sels and there were a va­ri­ety of shapes and sizes we saw here to­day."

, the two agen­cies sent out a joint press re­lease stat­ing the dead fish­es which had been wash­ing ashore in the Gulf since Mon­day were dumped by fish­er­men. The re­lease stat­ed the fish­es–her­ring, cat­fish and mul­let–had red marks about their bod­ies which in­di­cat­ed they were trapped in a net.

But Aboud said the le­sions were a symp­tom of ex­po­sure to the chem­i­cal Corex­it, which was used in the Gulf dur­ing the 2013 oil spill.

In ear­ly 2014, Petrotrin had cor­doned off an area in the Gulf and paid fish­er­men com­pen­sa­tion to stay away from the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area.

"We be­lieve the le­sions are be­ing caused by the Corex­it. This area where all of the dead fish are is the ex­act same area where the Corex­it was used; these fish­es have no net marks on them.

"If it is there were oth­er in­flu­ences, it is high­ly co­in­ci­den­tal the oth­er in­flu­ences would oc­cur in the same zone, the Petrotrin Red Zone, which Petrotrin had barred off and stopped peo­ple from fish­ing."

Ac­tivist Ed­ward Mood­ie, who or­gan­ised the tour, and the fish­er­man who cap­tained the boat, ex­am­ined the fish­es and al­so de­clared them fresh kills.

"These fish­es would have died overnight, as their gills were still red and their bod­ies had not start­ed to de­com­pose yet."

Both Mood­ie and Aboud re­newed their calls for the EMA?and IMA?to prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gate the fish deaths and for Gov­ern­ment to get in­volved to en­sure the agen­cies car­ried out their du­ties re­spon­si­bly.