The Chief Sec­re­tary has an­nounced the clo­sure of sev­en beach­es in To­ba­go as a re­sult of a shark at­tack this morn­ing.

A British na­tion­al is now re­ceiv­ing crit­i­cal care at hos­pi­tal af­ter the at­tack at Tur­tle Beach/ Cour­land Bay.

In a no­tice post­ed to his so­cial me­dia, the Chief Sec­re­tary said, "We are re­ceiv­ing no­tices of shark sight­ings in the Grafton Area. Con­se­quent­ly, out of an abun­dance of cau­tion (for the re­main­ing por­tions of to­day), we are forced to tem­porar­i­ly close beach­es: Ply­mouth, Cour­land Bay, Black Rock, Mt. Irvine, Buc­coo, Pi­geon Point, Store Bay and all coastal ar­eas in be­tween."

He said this will lead to a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the reef tours in the area. 

He added that fish­er­folk and mariners should ex­er­cise cau­tion when op­er­at­ing in the area. "Cur­rent­ly, we are do­ing drone re­con­nais­sance/sur­veil­lance, Coast Guard sur­veil­lance, and the De­part­ment of Fish­eries is comb­ing the area to en­sure safe­ty."