The seis­mic sur­veys which have been con­duct­ed in spawn­ing ar­eas, dur­ing spawn­ing times, and along mi­gra­to­ry paths of all ma­rine species are hav­ing a con­tin­u­ous neg­a­tive ef­fect on com­mer­cial catch rates. Our ex­pe­ri­ence is sup­port­ed by sci­en­tif­ic da­ta over­seas, but re­gret­ful­ly there are few stud­ies done in our wa­ter.We have nev­er said to stop the seis­mic ex­plo­sions, but have asked for the same safe­guards which are stan­dard in most ar­eas of the world, in­clud­ing Venezuela, Suri­nam, Nor­way, Aus­tralia, and Cana­da.

We have writ­ten to the Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Re­gion­al Fish­eries Mech­a­nism (based in Be­lize) with the hope that we can sen­si­tise stake­hold­ers re­gion­al­ly.Here is an ex­cerpt of our let­ter:

"We un­der­stand that the Caribbean Re­gion­al Fish­eries Mech­a­nism was es­tab­lished by Cari­com to pro­mote the sus­tain­able use of fish­eries by de­vel­op­ing, man­ag­ing, and con­serv­ing these re­sources in col­lab­o­ra­tion with stake­hold­ers to ben­e­fit the peo­ple of the Caribbean. We are seek­ing your ad­vice, any da­ta rel­e­vant you may have, and any sug­ges­tions on how reg­u­la­tion might be pos­si­ble at a re­gion­al lev­el, es­pe­cial­ly since here, our Gov­ern­ment re­fus­es to re­quire En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ments which would be a norm in most na­tions. We are guid­ed by reg­u­la­tions else­where where seis­mic sur­veys are pro­hib­it­ed dur­ing spawn­ing times, pro­hib­it­ed at spawn­ing ar­eas, nurs­ery ar­eas, or on mi­gra­to­ry paths.

"By fail­ing to re­quire EIAs our En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty pre­vents those car­ry­ing out seis­mic sur­veys from hav­ing to col­lect es­sen­tial base­line da­ta be­fore start­ing the sur­veys, dur­ing the sur­veys, and af­ter they have been com­plet­ed.

"Based on stud­ies we have sum­marised in our work­ing pa­per 'The en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of off­shore seis­mic sur­veys' (on our web­site, ffos­tt.com), we are con­vinced that the seis­mic sur­veys are di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for dis­place­ment of spawn­ing shoals and a re­sult­ing long term col­lapse of catch rates....By all in­di­ca­tions there has been a ma­jor col­lapse in T&T fish­eries that is so far not be­ing for­mal­ly ac­knowl­edged.

"Based on the log­ic that spawn­ing shoals are mi­gra­to­ry, FFOS are con­cerned that mi­gra­to­ry fish that move through­out the Caribbean are be­ing neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by what the oil/gas sec­tor is do­ing here in Trinidad. We need to build a data­base on where, when and what the im­pacts of these sur­veys are."

Gary Aboud

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea