Trib­utes have been pour­ing in for Kishore Boodram, pres­i­dent of the Clax­ton Bay Fish­ing As­so­ci­a­tion and an out­spo­ken ad­vo­cate for fish­er­folk across the coun­try, who died on Mon­day at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Boodram, 64, had been hos­pi­talised for the past two weeks for a kid­ney in­fec­tion.

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) re­called Boodram’s ac­tivism in 2009 when he mo­bi­lized the Clax­ton Bay fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty to fight for 140 acres of man­grove near the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate that had been ear­marked for a pro­posed steel mill and in­dus­tri­al port ex­pan­sion.

The group said in a state­ment: “Kishore has fought tire­less­ly to bring to the pub­lic the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of the near-shore mul­let fish­ery and of the im­por­tance of the Clax­ton Bay man­grove and in­shore sea­grass area which is one of the few re­main­ing spawn­ing ar­eas for the mul­let as well as a shel­ter­ing area for many species of ju­ve­nile fish which spawn in the Gulf of Paria.

“Kishore served on the now-de­funct Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit­ed Fish­er Folk and fought against the ap­provals for seis­mic sur­veys with­out any en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact as­sess­ments. We have lost a good cit­i­zen, may he rest in peace.”

Al­so pay­ing trib­ute was agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj who re­called Boodram’s “men­tor­ship, friend­ship and ad­vo­ca­cy.”

“Boodram was a con­sis­tent ad­vo­cate for the bet­ter­ment of lives and liveli­hoods of ar­ti­sanal and in­shore fish­ers across this coun­try. He was at the fore­front of ad­vo­ca­cy on the ma­jor is­sues in­clud­ing train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion, pol­lu­tion es­pe­cial­ly the im­pact of in­dus­tri­al and oil waste on the Gulf of Paria fish­ery, in­dus­tri­al trawl­ing, pira­cy and safe­ty at sea, ac­cess to mar­kets and mar­ketabil­i­ty, and cost of pro­duc­tion in­clud­ing cost of fu­el and in­cen­tives for fish­er­folk,” he said.

“He was al­ways open to col­lab­o­ra­tion. His knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence and will­ing­ness to share was wel­comed by many in­clud­ing lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts, re­searchers, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents who de­sired to learn about life be­yond our shores.”

Ma­haraj said Boodram had lob­bied for the ren­o­va­tion and up­grade of the Clax­ton Bay Fish Land­ing Site, fish mar­ket and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties which have fall­en in­to a state of dis­re­pair in re­cent times.

He called for the fa­cil­i­ty to be re­stored and ded­i­cat­ed to his mem­o­ry.