Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea is ex­plor­ing its op­tions to see if it can bring le­gal ac­tion against Petrotrin in wake of the La Brea oil spill in De­cem­ber last year.The or­gan­i­sa­tion's sec­re­tary Gary Aboud made the state­ment dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Wood­ford Square in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day."We are in the process of con­sult­ing with coun­sel and prepar­ing a le­gal ac­tion, be­cause we are be­ing forced in­to a po­si­tion where Petrotrin and the chair­man of the IMA (In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs) are avoid­ing us," he said."We are the pri­ma­ry stake­hold­ers of the ocean. We have not been con­sult­ed and we have not been al­lowed to be rep­re­sent­ed on the task force."

In Feb­ru­ary, the Gov­ern­ment set up a Na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal As­sess­ment Task Force (NEATF) to over­see the ac­tiv­i­ties nec­es­sary to ad­dress the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts of the oil spill."The Na­tion­al Trust, who is about pro­tect­ing build­ings, they are sit­ting on the spe­cial task force to in­ves­ti­gate the oil spill. They don't know about a boni­to, a her­ring...noth­ing," Aboud said.He said two months ago the com­mit­tee promised to pro­duce a re­port, the dead­line for which was yes­ter­day."Where is the re­port? Where can it be seen? Are we sup­posed to eat sick fish?" Aboud asked.

Aboud said the group al­so planned to in­ten­si­fy its protests be­cause sev­er­al fish­er­men who were promised com­pen­sa­tion had not re­ceived any to date.He al­so called on Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to in­ter­vene."You can­not de­stroy a liveli­hood and just walk away freely. Peo­ple have had to re­sort to do­ing all sort of un­usu­al things...they are dri­ving taxi, they are do­ing wood­work, they are hus­tling at con­struc­tion sites."Their in­comes are be­ing de­stroyed and the health of the coun­try is se­ri­ous­ly at stake," Aboud said.He dis­trib­uted a four-page let­ter to the me­dia in which the or­gan­i­sa­tion said it con­clud­ed a sur­vey of the spill. The re­sults, Aboud said, showed an 80 per cent over­all av­er­age drop in catch rates.

"The range of the col­lapse was from a 95 per cent high in Car­li Bay to a low of 45 per cent in San Fer­nan­do," Aboud added.He claimed as of April 7 Petrotrin had stopped pay­ing com­pen­sa­tion to the three most af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.He al­so warned: "The oil that is in the wa­ter is dead­ly. The EMA is claim­ing that every­thing is nor­mal, and go ahead and eat the fish, but there are fish­er­men who are sell­ing bad fish."Petrotrin and the prime min­is­ter must come out of the clos­et and come in­to the light of hon­esty and ad­mit the li­a­bil­i­ty that they have cre­at­ed," Aboud said.

Bha­dose Sook­nanan of the Clax­ton Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion said the ma­jor­i­ty of fish­er­men did not re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion."Clax­ton Bay, Mara­bel­la, Car­li Bay, San Fer­nan­do...no­body gets noth­ing. Right now in Clax­ton Bay we have net messed up with oil. We go out to sea we catch­ing a oily mud­dy sub­stance."Fish­er­men cussing me from since East­er to now that we in Clax­ton Bay get mon­ey and up to now we get noth­ing," Sook­nanan said.Petrotrin said it had spent some $35 mil­lion to clean up the spill.