KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

A Ma­yaro fam­i­ly is now cling­ing to hope that their pa­tri­arch, Her­ralal “Lenus” Cooblal, and his fel­low fish­er­men will re­turn home alive, af­ter a search crew found his ves­sel aban­doned at sea yes­ter­day.

Cooblal, 54, a fa­ther of three of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, left the Guayagua­yare Fish­ing De­pot around 2 pm last Tues­day aboard his moth­er boat Benom 2. Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Cooblal were Rishi Kim­chan, 38, of Grand La­goon, Andy George and an­oth­er known on­ly by his alias, Tall Man, who lived around the area.

T&T Coast Guard, Air Guard, Ma­yaro and Ce­dros po­lice, Guayagua­yare fish­er­folk and the Hunters Search and Res­cue (HSR) combed the shore and sea to lo­cate the men up to yes­ter­day evening but with­out luck.

HSR Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat con­firmed that a crew had found the boat cap­sized in one of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Ltd’s off­shore fields in South West Trinidad. There were no crew mem­bers in sight.

Search crews iden­ti­fied the boat by its reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, TFN 5906. The 250-HP out­board en­gine was in­tact.

“The search con­tin­ues for the miss­ing fish­er­men. We know they are strong swim­mers. We know they are very ex­pe­ri­enced, and it is just a mat­ter of search­ing the seashores, the South coast and maybe in­to the ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters of Venezuela to see if they are drift­ing in the wa­ters,” Ramb­harat said.

Cooblal’s daugh­ter told Guardian Me­dia that her fa­ther was a fish­er­man for over 15 years but took a hia­tus and picked up gar­den­ing.

Cooblal re­turned to the fish­ing busi­ness two weeks ago, and last Tues­day was his first launch of the boat.

Ani­ta said her fa­ther packed stock for four days of fish­ing off the coast of Guayagua­yare. But when they did not re­turn on Fri­day af­ter­noon, Cooblal’s fam­i­ly re­port­ed them miss­ing to Ma­yaro po­lice.

Ani­ta said the po­lice con­tact­ed the Coast Guard. The fam­i­ly lat­er saw a he­li­copter search­ing the sea off Grand La­goon.

“We think that the en­gine prob­a­bly gave up. Gas prob­a­bly fin­ished, or some­thing hap­pened, and they re­mained drift­ing. We re­al­ly did not have an idea, so we thought that even­tu­al­ly, they would come back home,” Ani­ta said.

With news that a crew lo­cat­ed the boat in South West Trinidad, Ani­ta said the fam­i­ly did not know what was go­ing on but did not be­lieve there was a pi­rate at­tack.

“We do not know what caused the boat to sink, but there were some high winds. We hope to find them and bring them back home alive.”

Ramb­harat agreed that a pi­rate at­tack was un­like­ly, as the en­gine was still at­tached. He said a crew towed the ves­sel to a Her­itage fa­cil­i­ty around noon. Search teams spec­u­lat­ed that the boat ran out of fu­el and left the men drift­ing, and rough seas caused it to flip. He said the fish­er­men head­ed to an area called the Mang, off Venezuela’s north­ern coast. He be­lieves the fish­er­men are some­where in the Colum­bus Chan­nel.

“It is an area that is a rich fish­ing ground for the fish­er­folk of Guayagua­yare, Moru­ga and Morne Di­a­blo. It is some dis­tance away. It is around 60-80 miles away, so the is­sue is what re­al­ly hap­pened. Did they run out of fu­el on their way back or en­counter en­gine prob­lems?”

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray ex­pressed sad­ness at the fish­er­men’s dis­ap­pear­ance. Paray called on all pri­vate fish­ing ves­sels in the area to as­sist in the search by con­tact­ing HSR.

A me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed: “MP Paray con­tin­ues to of­fer his prayers for the safe re­turn of the four fish­er­men. The MP is con­fi­dent that the com­bined ef­forts of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties and the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty will re­sult in a pos­i­tive out­come.”