Carisa Lee

No of­fi­cial po­si­tion has been tak­en as yet by ei­ther the Bar­ba­dos or T&T gov­ern­ment on al­le­ga­tions of Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men over­fish­ing in this coun­try’s wa­ters.

The over­fish­ing claims were made by mem­bers of the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AF­TA) who will de­liv­er let­ters to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Kaz­im Ho­sein, and oth­er of­fi­cials seek­ing their in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter.

AF­TA pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas said over­fish­ing cre­ates a greater prob­lem as many com­mer­cial species de­pend on fly­ing fish for food. This caus­es a short­age of com­mer­cial species and high­er prices on the re­tail mar­ket, he added.

The fly­ing fish is part of the na­tion­al dish of Bar­ba­dos. Its sym­bol can be found on coins, and in art­work and is part of the of­fi­cial lo­go of the Bar­ba­dos Tourism Au­thor­i­ty.

The fly­ing fish feud be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos goes back decades. Yes­ter­day, the cur­rent Bar­ba­dos Am­bas­sador to Cari­com David Comis­siong could not be reached for com­ment, but his pre­de­ces­sor Robert “Bob­by” Mor­ris was quot­ed in the me­dia say­ing that he had ad­vised fish­er­folk there to come to­geth­er and form a Cari­com com­pa­ny that would al­low them to fish any­where in the re­gion.

“You can go and fish in Trinidad wa­ters with the same rights as Trinida­di­ans … there is no rea­son why that can’t hap­pen,” he said.

Former Barbados ambassador to Caricom Robert “Bobby” Morris

COURTESY BARBADOS TODAY

Mor­ris said there was no need for the cur­rent ten­sion.

“All the cov­er­age is in place for that to be pre­vent­ed,” he said.

He said when he was am­bas­sador he signed off an agree­ment with T&T that said if any Bar­ba­di­an fish­ing boat is cap­tured in this coun­try au­thor­i­ties here have to no­ti­fy the con­sulate of Bar­ba­dos.

The T&T-Bar­ba­dos fly­ing fish re­la­tion­ship dates back to the 60s when Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men taught To­bag­o­ni­ans how to drift and lurk to catch the fish. In the 80s the first agree­ment be­tween the two coun­tries was signed.

Ten years lat­er, then prime min­is­ters George Cham­bers and Sir Harold Bernard St John agreed that Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men could fish in T&T’s Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ).

How­ev­er, in the ear­ly 2000s, the im­pact of cli­mate change caused the fly­ing fish to mi­grate to T&T’s wa­ters. This forced Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men to fish here for a por­tion of their na­tion­al dish.

In No­vem­ber 2004 two fish­er­men who caught 3,500 fly­ing fish in T&T wa­ters were al­lowed to go back home with their catch. Months ear­li­er, then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day had warned that the Coast Guard would ap­pre­hend Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men caught in T&T wa­ters.

His warn­ing came af­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, who was the then at­tor­ney gen­er­al, told her coun­try’s fish­er­folk to seek the fly­ing fish in T&T’s wa­ters as the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea states that every na­tion is en­ti­tled to 12 miles of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al sea.

In 2006, the is­sue went be­fore a Per­ma­nent Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion, and the bound­ary was set near­ly mid­way be­tween the two is­lands.

Af­ter the rul­ing, An­don Blake and Gary A Camp­bell, in a ma­rine pol­i­cy jour­nal ti­tled: Con­flict over fly­ing fish: The dis­pute be­tween Trinidad & To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos, de­scribed found four sce­nar­ios:

• The Ar­bi­tral Tri­bunal agrees that Bar­ba­dos has tra­di­tion­al fish­ing rights in Trinidad & To­ba­go’s EEZ, and an agree­ment is reached to joint­ly ex­ploit the fly­ing fish.

• Bar­ba­dos is recog­nised as pos­sess­ing user rights to the re­source, but no agree­ment is reached for its joint ex­ploita­tion.

• Bar­ba­dos is not recog­nised as hav­ing a for­mal right of ac­cess, but an agree­ment is reached for the shared ex­ploita­tion of the re­source.

• Bar­ba­di­ans are not recog­nised as hav­ing ac­cess and no agree­ment is reached

In 2009, an agree­ment was signed but it has since ex­pired. Ten years lat­er, Mia Mot­t­ley, now Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, en­cour­aged the coun­try’s fish­er­men to com­mu­ni­cate with their To­ba­go coun­ter­parts. Then min­is­ter of mar­itime af­fairs and the blue econ­o­my in Bar­ba­dos Kirk Humphrey said dis­cus­sions took place and he ex­pect­ed a smoother re­la­tion­ship.

Mot­t­ley is ex­pect­ed to vis­it T&T for the up­com­ing re­gion­al sym­po­sium on crime next week.