KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) is call­ing for leg­is­la­tion to be en­act­ed to pro­tect sharks in lo­cal wa­ters. The call was made in re­sponse to videos wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia of a size­able shark kill in Buc­coo, To­ba­go.

Lam­beau fish ven­dor Akime “Shark” Dou­glas said it is cus­tom­ary for fish­er­men to catch sharks in abun­dance and fish­er­men had de­cid­ed to catch fish on Wednes­day. How­ev­er, many sus­pect sharks were tar­get­ed fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent at Tur­tle Bay last week when British tourist Pe­ter Smith was at­tacked by a bull shark. 

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, FFOS Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Gary Aboud said T&T needs to do its part to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble and en­dan­gered species. The group wants the Gov­ern­ment to ban all shark ex­ports im­me­di­ate­ly.

Aboud said in 2014 Cab­i­net ap­proved a note for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a na­tion­al ban on shark finning af­ter it was re­port­ed that this coun­try ranks sixth world­wide for the vol­ume of shark fins sup­plied to Japan. How­ev­er, ten years lat­er, no leg­is­la­tion has been im­ple­ment­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Na­ture Red List of Threat­ened Species, more than one-third of sharks are threat­ened with ex­tinc­tion and they are one of the most en­dan­gered species in the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment.

Aboud said a ban would demon­strate T&T’s com­mit­ment to aquat­ic con­ser­va­tion and en­sure the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of its ma­rine ecosys­tems. In­ter­na­tion­al fish­ing fleets would be banned from catch­ing sharks in lo­cal wa­ter and the land­ing of all en­dan­gered sharks would be for­bid­den, par­tic­u­lar­ly those pro­tect­ed by the Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Trade in En­dan­gered Species of Wild Fau­na and Flo­ra.

FFOS al­so wants the gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op sci­ence-based man­age­ment strate­gies that pri­ori­tise shark con­ser­va­tion while ad­dress­ing le­git­i­mate con­cerns about pub­lic safe­ty.

“FFOS is call­ing on our gov­ern­ment to sit up and re­spond to crit­i­cal is­sues of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, which are re­quired for the long-term sta­bil­i­ty and bal­ance of all hu­man so­ci­eties. We can­not af­ford to mis­man­age our species,” Aboud said.

Al­though the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has con­demned the “in­dis­crim­i­nate killing” of the sharks, the FFOS and oth­ers be­lieve the $10,000 re­ward of­fered for the cap­ture of the shark in­volved in the at­tack en­cour­aged the kill. The THA re­tract­ed the of­fer with­in hours of ad­ver­tis­ing it but Aboud said the dam­age had al­ready been done.

He said that cou­pled with the lack of leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect sharks in lo­cal wa­ters is the ab­sence of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness ini­tia­tives on the eco­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of sharks and their role in main­tain­ing healthy ma­rine ecosys­tems.  By en­cour­ag­ing a greater un­der­stand­ing of the apex preda­tors, T&T can fos­ter a cul­ture of co­ex­is­tence and mit­i­gate con­flicts be­tween hu­mans and sharks he added.

The shark killings were not the on­ly eco­log­i­cal dam­age To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced re­cent­ly. Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke said the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) must be held re­spon­si­ble for an in­ci­dent where some­one car­ried out earth­works at Tur­tle Beach that de­stroyed leatherback tur­tle nests.

Duke, the As­sem­bly­man for Rox­bor­ough/ Ar­gyle, said any­thing be­yond the land bound­ary is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment. He is call­ing for a re­port from the EMA to ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main that a pri­vate cit­i­zen used a back­hoe to cut a chan­nel from land to sea, de­stroy­ing the nests.

Duke said the is­land’s tourism prod­uct is suf­fer­ing a hard blow.

“That to me is a threat to our tourism, a threat to our en­vi­ron­ment, a threat to a very rare species, the leatherback tur­tle, which finds its nest­ing in To­ba­go, and it is a threat to To­ba­go’s peace and hap­pi­ness,” he said.

EMA Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Hay­den Ro­mano could not be reached for com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day.