RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Up to late last night, mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard and the Po­lice Ser­vice were at­tempt­ing to re­trieve a pirogue with sev­er­al de­com­pos­ing bod­ies in it. The ves­sel was dis­cov­ered near the bpTT Ca­sia plat­form off the south-east coast of Trinidad.

Po­lice con­firmed around 3 pm that sev­er­al de­com­posed hu­man bod­ies were found aboard the boat in the At­lantic Ocean, be­lieved to have been drift­ing for days.

The ves­sel, re­port­ed­ly spot­ted by work­ers in the area, raised alarms due to its con­di­tion and un­pleas­ant odour. The coast guard and po­lice were sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed. Up­on in­spec­tion, it was con­firmed that mul­ti­ple hu­man re­mains were in­side.

The iden­ti­ties of the de­ceased and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing their deaths re­main un­known up to late yes­ter­day. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing to de­ter­mine the ori­gin of the boat, the cause of death, and any po­ten­tial foul play.

Up un­til 8 pm, Lieu­tenant Khadi­ja Lamy, the pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer of the Coast Guard, stat­ed that no ad­di­tion­al de­tails were avail­able. She con­firmed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Mean­while, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin con­firmed last night that his of­fi­cers, along with the Coast Guard, were still work­ing to re­trieve the pirogue.

He added that they would tow the ves­sel to To­ba­go, where they plan to con­duct thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tions to de­ter­mine its ori­gin and the na­tion­al­i­ty of the de­ceased.

In May 2021, 14 de­com­pos­ing bod­ies and hu­man re­mains were found on a boat adrift off the coast of Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go.

Lo­cal po­lice con­clud­ed the ves­sel to be from Mau­ri­ta­nia af­ter an in­spec­tion of the boat un­cov­ered sev­en mo­bile phones and for­eign cur­ren­cy among the corpses.

Po­lice said the phones had in­for­ma­tion about the West African coun­tries of Mau­ri­ta­nia and Mali.

The boat, which drift­ed to To­ba­go, be­came part of the his­to­ry of so-called “ghost boats” car­ry­ing mi­grants from African coun­tries that have been lost along the Ca­nary Route, known for treach­er­ous cur­rents.

The boat, which was adrift off To­ba­go, was re­port­ed on The Ca­nary web­site in a June 2021 ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Ghost Boats: A Mau­ri­tan­ian cayu­co (ca­noe) in the Caribbean high­lights those lost on The Ca­nary Route.” The ar­ti­cle stat­ed, “There has not been a month in re­cent times dur­ing which one or two ves­sels have not dis­ap­peared from Mau­ri­ta­nia on this route, of which noth­ing more has been heard in more than a year. ,

“In most cas­es, these boats dis­ap­pear with­out a trace, cap­size, break up, and are swal­lowed by the ocean. But, some­times, rarely, the trade winds and the cur­rents that make up the great ocean­ic churn man­age to car­ry an in­tact cayu­co to the Amer­i­c­as, drift­ing the same route Christo­pher Colum­bus in­au­gu­rat­ed in 1492: from the Ca­nary Is­lands to the Caribbean Sea.”

The ar­ti­cle added that in Tener­ife (Por­tu­gal), 24 re­cent graves, with anony­mous tomb­stones, were ev­i­dence of the fate of one group of mi­grants. “It is a dan­ger to which the thou­sands of young Africans who at­tempt to trav­el the Ca­nary Route, to­wards some Eu­ro­pean dream, sub­ject them­selves in flim­sy fish­ing ves­sels, to end up ex­posed to the harsh re­al­i­ties of the ocean, where death by thirst, sur­round­ed by wa­ter, is still all too com­mon.”

The ar­ti­cle al­so not­ed that a ca­noe was found drift­ing off Bar­ba­dos in May 2006. It left for the Ca­nary Is­lands from Cape Verde, car­ry­ing 47 young Sene­galese, at the end of 2005. Eleven de­com­posed bod­ies were re­cov­ered from the ves­sel.