For the past sev­er­al weeks, watch­dog group Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) say shrimp trawlers have been il­le­gal­ly in­vad­ing the North Coast in search of the large tiger shrimp that breed in the area.

Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary of the FFOS, Gary Aboud, or­gan­ised an ex­pe­di­tion yes­ter­day, tak­ing a Guardian Me­dia team out to sea where the trawlers were in full op­er­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 4 of the Fish­eries Act, trawl­ing with a der­m­er­sal trawler (op­er­at­ed by drag­ging or pulling a trawl net on the bot­tom of the sea) on the North Coast should on­ly be done two nau­ti­cal miles away from the coast in the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

But armed with a GPS de­vice, Aboud point­ed out that the two ves­sels seen op­er­at­ing were well with­in the re­strict­ed two-mile area.

“This is one of eight trawlers that has been on the north coast il­le­gal­ly fish­ing in the pro­tect­ed area. Since 2000, we have a law that says they have to stay east of Saut d’ Eau, out­side of two nau­ti­cal miles and here now they are less than two miles away from the coast. We called the Coast Guard but all of the Coast Guard ves­sels are down,” Aboud said.

When the crew on­board the two trawlers saw the cam­eras on­board the pirogue car­ry­ing the news team, the ves­sels be­gan head­ing fur­ther out to sea. Their nets were still dropped and con­tin­ued to cap­ture shrimp and oth­er ma­rine life as they sped off.

Aboud said when trawlers drop their nets, they al­so drop chains on­to the sea bed to dis­turb the sand and force the shrimp in­to the nets. 

He said for every pound of shrimp they catch, the nets pick up about 14 pounds of by-catch- which is usu­al­ly ju­ve­nile fish that keep the North Coast fish­ing trade alive.

“All along the North Coast fish­er­men are pau­perised be­cause they live by pot­ting and now you have the shrimp com­ing down on all the mi­gra­to­ry species come and feed on the shrimp, so when the trawlers come in the pro­tect­ed ar­eas, there is no more fish­ing, ask any fish­er­man in T&T, fish­ing is col­laps­ing,” he said.

He said al­though the trawlers de­pend on their catch in the area to sus­tain them­selves and their fam­i­lies, they were de­stroy­ing the liveli­hoods of hun­dreds of ar­ti­sanal fish­er­folk.

Aboud is­sued a call for the Gov­ern­ment to make the pro­tec­tion of the fish­ing trade a pri­or­i­ty.

“We are ask­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to live up to their words, we have the nau­ti­cal read­ings show­ing where they are, they are 1.6 miles off the coast and they come all the way in­side, they break all the laws...the Gov­ern­ment said if they are caught once, they will be banned for life.”

He said suc­ces­sive Gov­ern­ments had promised to ban shrimp trawl­ing al­to­geth­er be­cause of its dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects on ma­rine life.

“Trawl­ing has been dy­na­mite fish­ing in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We are ask­ing the na­tion to come to­geth­er to call on the Gov­ern­ment to ho­n­our their word, to ho­n­our their leg­is­la­tion. Noth­ing is be­ing done and the North Coast com­mu­ni­ties are left de­fence­less and pau­perised.”