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Monday, February 24, 2025

Dead birds wash ashore at La Brea

by

Rishard Khan
1883 days ago
20191229

Con­cern is grow­ing among res­i­dents and Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) fol­low­ing the re­cent dis­cov­ery of 40 pel­i­can car­cas­es along the Point Sable beach in La Brea.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, FFOS pro­gramme di­rec­tor Lisa Prem­c­hand ex­plained there have been stud­ies which raised is­sues with the con­tents of the wa­ter and an­i­mals from the Gulf of Paria.

“We sim­ply don’t know what po­ten­tial ef­fect the eat­ing fish from the Gulf of Paria can have on hu­mans, but there have been FFOS PAH (Poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hy­dro­car­bon) 2016 lab­o­ra­to­ry re­port which warns of hu­man threat and the 2019 Aaron Bal­go­b­in study which con­cludes high lev­els of car­cino­genic Poly­cyclic aro­mat­ic hy­dro­car­bons in the Gulf of Paria.”

“If pel­i­cans are eat­ing the fish in this area and are dy­ing, what would hap­pen to hu­mans that are eat­ing the fish dai­ly from the gulf?” Prem­c­hand asked.

This is why, she said, they have been call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to com­mence a sci­en­tif­ic mon­i­tor­ing pro­gramme to test the wa­ter, fish and sand reg­u­lar­ly to de­ter­mine the lev­el of tox­i­c­i­ty in the Gulf of Paria to de­ter­mine its po­ten­tial ef­fects on hu­mans.

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke to a res­i­dent of the area and reg­u­lar to the beach, Wayne Hen­ry who said this has been “hap­pen­ing for years now”.

He said, this has been a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence since 2013 when there was an oil spill near La Brea.

“Since the oil spill to now, we’ve been bat­tling them kind of bat­tles and it not mak­ing no sense,” Hen­ry said frus­trat­ed­ly.

He in­di­cat­ed that both the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EMA) and In­sti­tute for Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) have vis­it­ed the area and con­duct­ed tests over the years. How­ev­er, he does not trust their as­sess­ment.

Guardian Me­dia tried reach­ing out to the EMA man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano and IMA di­rec­tor Ahamad Khan for com­ment on the mat­ter, how­ev­er, calls went unan­swered last evening.

Prem­c­hand vis­it­ed the area with FFOS pres­i­dent Gary Aboud yes­ter­day morn­ing and said they saw “over 40 whole car­cas­es” which were in var­i­ous stages of de­com­po­si­tion. She said, while they can’t be cer­tain, they al­so sus­pect it is re­lat­ed to the 2013 oil spill.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to vis­it the site yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, how­ev­er, was ad­vised by Hen­ry to vis­it dur­ing low tide when the car­cas­es would be vis­i­ble.


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