Loyse Vin­cent

Fish­er­men from both east and west To­ba­go are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to ar­bi­trate on their be­half, af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing thou­sands of dol­lars worth of loss­es dur­ing the first week of a geo­sci­en­tif­ic sur­vey be­ing done by BHP Bil­li­ton off the coast of To­ba­go.

The fish­er­men say they were in­formed that the sur­vey would be done on the south­ern coast of the is­land. But they claim the BHP Bil­li­ton fleet passed on the north­ern coast, caus­ing sev­er­al fish­er­men to flee to safe­ty af­ter find­ing them­selves di­rect­ly in the path of the ex­er­cise.

Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said dam­age claims are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

Dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion vice pres­i­dent Ju­nior Quashie said they felt the com­pa­ny was be­ing disin­gen­u­ous.

“They sent out a nav­i­ga­tion­al warn­ing stat­ing that the rig was sup­posed to leave Drag­on Mouth in Port-of-Spain and pass south of To­ba­go and go up to east of To­ba­go. It did not, it came west and cre­at­ed a lot of dam­ages to fish­er­men’s equip­ment, three boats in the fleet and a chase boat and we saw them.”

Sev­er­al fish­er­men came for­ward to give per­son­al ac­counts of their loss­es. One of them, Kem­ba Lawrence, said he has been a fish­er­man for 15 years and fish­ing is his on­ly means of earn­ing an in­come.

“I’ve lost at least eight fish pots and three fads (spe­cial­ly-de­signed sub­merged traps used to at­tract fish) and ex­act­ly where my fad was an­chored, the ship passed in that di­rec­tion. They are no longer there, I checked yes­ter­day af­ter see­ing the ship pass in the ar­eas ear­li­er this week and I nev­er had that prob­lem be­fore.”

Nigel Nichols, of the Crown Point area, said he lost sev­en fish­ing pots af­ter the BHP Bil­li­ton fleet passed through the wa­ters off the Caribbean Sea. He said the pots, which cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1,000 to con­struct, usu­al­ly earn him $3,000 when he gets a com­plete haul.

“Day be­fore yes­ter­day when the rig passed up, I didn’t go to sea that day, so most of us sit down on the beach watch the boat pass up. To­day I went out, I didn’t see any from the sev­en.”

Cul­lo­den fish­er­man Shel­don Coop­er said he was dev­ast­ed, as he lost 16 fish­ing pots. He said he saw the no­tice but he didn’t see the need to re­move his equip­ment, as the sur­vey was sched­uled for an­oth­er area and the no­tice made no men­tion of fish­er­men re­triev­ing their equip­ment.

“This thing is crazy. Imag­ine be­ing out in sea with a reg­u­lar 25-foot fish­ing boat and then see­ing this big 300-foot boat head­ing in your di­rec­tion. All of my pots are gone and that is how I made a liv­ing – who do I com­plain to now? We beg­ging, we cry­ing, Lord, please help us.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Prin­ci­pal – Me­dia Re­la­tions of BHP Bil­li­ton Judy Dane for a com­ment on the claims made by fish­er­men.

In a state­ment, Dane said, “On Wednes­day, Ju­ly 21, BHP re­ceived re­ports from fish­er­folk about the pos­si­ble loss of equip­ment in­volv­ing a BHP con­tract­ed drill­ship and its sup­port­ing ves­sels off­shore Trinidad and To­ba­go. The ves­sels were en route in prepa­ra­tion for an ap­praisal drilling cam­paign at the Bon­gos 3 and 4 deep-wa­ter wells. BHP is in the process of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the re­ports and will com­mu­ni­cate with reg­u­la­tors and the fish­er­folk about any nec­es­sary ac­tions when the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete.”

Dane said BHP is com­mit­ted to safe op­er­a­tions and the safe­ty of peo­ple and the com­mu­ni­ties in which the com­pa­ny op­er­ates “al­ways comes first.”