Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Af­ter hours of search­ing for any pos­si­ble life on­board an uniden­ti­fied sunken ves­sel off the coast of Cove in To­ba­go yes­ter­day, divers con­firmed there was no one on­board.

The search and res­cue op­er­a­tion was led by the T&T Coast Guard and oth­er agen­cies.

Alvin Dou­glas, the lead of the dive team from To­ba­go Ma­rine Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd, said it took an hour to check for pos­si­ble sur­vivors.

An­oth­er div­er told Guardian Me­dia that the pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment of the wreck­age sug­gests the ves­sel may have been aban­doned and left to sink.

The THA, To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and Coast Guard are ex­pect­ed to have the full as­sess­ment re­port by this morn­ing.

Last night, just af­ter the com­ple­tion of the as­sess­ment of the wreck­age, Dou­glas said, “The boat has dragged on the bot­tom and done a lot of dam­age to the reef for­ma­tion. We couldn’t get the par­tic­u­lars of the ves­sel be­cause it is ground­ed in a haz­ardous area. There is a large de­bris field, which sug­gests that the boat was com­ing from a south­ern­ly di­rec­tion and came in­to con­tact with the reef.”

He con­firmed that it is a car­go ves­sel and that its up­per struc­ture was ripped off from the hull. He said the team plans to fol­low the de­bris one more time to see if they find any crew mem­bers who may have gone down in the su­per­struc­ture where the liv­ing quar­ters are usu­al­ly lo­cat­ed.

Up un­til 5 pm, it was un­clear when the ves­sel sunk but it was spot­ted just af­ter 7 pm Tues­day. In ad­di­tion to the res­cue op­er­a­tion, the THA was al­so bat­tling a se­vere oil spill in the wa­ter, caused by the ves­sel, which has reached the shore and road­side in some ar­eas.

TEMA mem­bers, as well as oth­er first re­spon­ders, were in meet­ings as ear­ly as 9 am to dis­cuss clean-up ef­forts.

At Cove, the shore­line was cov­ered in a blan­ket of oil. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, the pun­gent smell of oil was over­whelm­ing and could be de­tect­ed miles away from the Claude Noel High­way.

In an emer­gency me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said it was dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the spill at this time. He out­lined three fo­cus­es, which in­clud­ed the res­cues. He added that the THA was al­so fo­cused on whether or not, “there was any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance or im­por­tance trapped on the ves­sel”.

“We need to dis­cov­er the ac­tu­al name of the ves­sel so that we can iden­ti­fy the own­er and the ju­ris­dic­tion un­der which the ves­sel is li­censed. Then we can as­sign blame,” he said.

Un­til the sit­u­a­tion is un­der con­trol, Au­gus­tine called on the pub­lic and fish­er­men to stay away from the area. Au­gus­tine em­pha­sised, “Don’t go and throw your line around the area of the oil spill to catch any fish.”

How­ev­er, TEMA di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art said the type of ves­sel will re­veal how much oil was spilled. He said be­cause there was no dis­tress call, he doesn’t be­lieve there was any­one on­board.

“It points to the cer­tain­ty of know­ing that there are no souls on board. If there were, it is pos­si­ble that there is a hol­low part with an air pock­et that could al­low for life.”

The oil spill has af­fect­ed Lam­beau, Ca­noe Bay Beach, Scar­bor­ough Beach, the coast­line at the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach and Golf Re­sort, and the Scar­bor­ough Port. TEMA con­firmed sight­ings of what seemed to be oil from the wreck­age reach­ing the east of the is­land at Rox­bor­ough up to Belle Gar­den just be­fore 5 pm.

Mean­while, All-To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas urged the pub­lic not to pur­chase fish un­til the sit­u­a­tion is un­der con­trol.

Dou­glas said, “I am call­ing on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to please act speed­i­ly and hasti­ly to en­sure that we pre­serve some form of life. So, the fish­er­men would need help be­cause I wouldn’t ad­vise them to go out, catch bait, or fish in that vicin­i­ty.”

The THA will hold com­pen­sa­tion talks for the fish­er­folk af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing and en­gag­ing the own­ers of the ves­sel.