Is there over­fish­ing of fly­ing fish (or any oth­er fish) in To­ba­go wa­ters? No­body who has re­spond­ed to the ques­tion seems to know.

Cur­tis Dou­glas of AT­FA (All To­ba­go Fish­er Folks As­so­ci­a­tion) be­lieves there is, but he does not have the da­ta that would sup­port his be­lief. Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­ley does not know but does not be­lieve there is. And she claims that Dr Row­ley, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter fol­lows her in not know­ing but not be­liev­ing.

Dou­glas’ be­lief hangs on at least two ob­ser­va­tions: 1) the Bar­ba­di­an boats with their mas­sive ice­box­es fish for rough­ly a stretch of six days as com­pared to To­bag­on­ian pirogues that hard­ly go be­yond a day and a night; and 2) these same Bar­ba­di­an boats use nets and “cuts them away”–that is, aban­dons them–when the ice­box­es are full, but the nets have ex­cess fish.

Mot­t­ley, speak­ing on be­half of both her­self and Dr Row­ley, de­clares that Ba­jans have every right to fish in To­ba­go wa­ters, that it is not pos­si­ble for her and him to know that over­fish­ing takes place and that the fish­eries de­part­ments/min­istries should come to­geth­er and give us a con­clu­sion based on the facts and the sci­ence of the sit­u­a­tion.

She and he have ex­pressed these views but with­out telling us what they un­der­stand over­fish­ing to be. But, from what Dou­glas says, it is de­plet­ing the stocks in dif­fer­ent sites and leav­ing lit­tle for the To­bag­on­ian fish­er folks to har­vest the fish for the pur­pos­es of sus­tain­ing their fam­i­lies and pro­cess­ing it for sale lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Over­fish­ing im­per­ils both pur­pos­es.  

Ac­cord­ing to a Loop News re­port, Mot­t­ley had more to say. Let me sum­marise. AT­FA’s over­fish­ing is­sue was “ir­rel­e­vant” since the re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas gave any Caribbean per­son who lives in a sig­na­to­ry coun­try the right to set up a busi­ness in Cari­com. Just as a Trinida­di­an could set up a ho­tel in Bar­ba­dos, so could a Bar­ba­di­an fish in (Trinidad and) To­ba­go wa­ters. But there was a big­ger is­sue–the ad­verse ef­fects of sar­gas­sum sea­weed on the fly­ing fish stocks and on the gen­er­al Caribbean ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment. And then she says this: “If we can get an agree­ment that deals with con­ser­va­tion and the man­age­ment of (fish­ing) stock and pre­vent­ing over­fish­ing that is in the in­ter­est of all of us.”

A fish­ing agree­ment. We don’t have any cur­rent­ly. At least, I haven’t been able to find any. There have been short-lived ones in the past, but none has en­dured. That is why Mot­t­ley felt oblig­ed to ref­er­ence the Ch­aguara­mas Treaty. In 2014, there was “a pend­ing fish­ing agree­ment” be­tween the two coun­tries, but to­day there doesn’t seem to be any. Re the pend­ing agree­ment, Dr David Es­t­wick, the for­mer Bar­ba­di­an min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture (where fish­eries is lo­cat­ed) ob­served that, giv­en the fact that his coun­try didn’t/doesn’t have the 200-mile space “some­times de­lim­it­ing both coun­tries”, min­is­ter-to-min­is­ter dis­cus­sion “could … set the en­vi­ron­ment for tru­ly hav­ing ac­cess to the ma­rine space and the re­sources with­in that space with­out form­ing en­cum­brances.”

So Es­t­wick, Mot­t­ley, and Bar­ba­dos are on a dif­fer­ent lev­el than Dou­glas. Their fo­cus is on dif­fer­ent mat­ters. The Bar­ba­di­ans are fo­cused on the gen­er­al ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment and the forg­ing of a bi­lat­er­al agree­ment on how the re­sources con­tained there­in can be man­aged and ac­cessed; the oth­er is fo­cused on le­gal man­age­ment of To­ba­go’s fly­ing fish stocks, which they per­ceive to be over­fished by the Ba­jans, for home con­sump­tion and lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

Mot­t­ley treats the so­lu­tion to the mat­ter as be­ing un­der the purview of the fish­eries de­part­ments of the two coun­tries. But Dou­glas tells me that it should be a mat­ter in­volv­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of To­ba­go (the As­sem­bly) and the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos, and that if Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gov­ern­ment must be in­volved, To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary should lead the ne­go­ti­a­tions. He sees it as a po­lit­i­cal mat­ter at the heart of To­ba­go’s strug­gle and as­pi­ra­tion for au­ton­o­my.

To­ba­go’s lead­er­ship has not (yet?) been in­volved in the ex­change of views from the two coun­tries on the cur­rent out­break of con­cern by AT­FA, but I can’t see them be­ing left out, go­ing for­ward.

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He al­so has writ­ten hun­dreds of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com