Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

New satel­lite da­ta analysed by the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) has de­tect­ed that the un­con­firmed oil-like sub­stance orig­i­nat­ing from the Gulf­stream spill south of Cove, To­ba­go, has en­tered Venezuela’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, TEMA said, “Satel­lite im­agery, cap­tured on Feb­ru­ary 15, 2024, at 18:26HRS, iden­ti­fied a po­ten­tial oil spill be­lieved to orig­i­nate from an over­turned ves­sel ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150m SSE from the south­ern coast of Cove.”

TEMA added, “The im­agery vivid­ly show­cas­es a sil­ver-like slick and streaks of a thick, black-like sub­stance. The anom­aly now ex­tends 150 nau­ti­cal miles north­west from the west­ern­most point of To­ba­go, reach­ing ar­eas north of The Los Tes­ti­gos Is­lands, north of Venezuela, and south of Grena­da.”

TEMA has been work­ing with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) and the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) to “yield a high con­fi­dence lev­el, at­trib­uted to the known sus­pect­ed point source”.

How­ev­er, no­table vari­a­tions in slick thick­ness were ob­served and a thin oil-like sub­stance was ev­i­dent in the im­agery.

The Los Tes­ti­gos Is­lands are about 400 kilo­me­tres (250 miles) north­east of Cara­cas. The pop­u­la­tion is about 200 in­hab­i­tants (ac­cord­ing to the 2001 cen­sus), most­ly fish­ing fam­i­lies.

Yes­ter­day, the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) al­so met with stake­hold­ers across the south­ern Wind­wards, in­clud­ing T&T.

TEMA CEO Al­lan Stew­art said, “I can re­port, based on what was said at the meet­ing, that they (CDE­MA, Grena­da) have ac­ti­vat­ed their plan to cope with what is com­ing that may prob­a­bly come their way based on those pro­jec­tions there.

“There is a prob­a­bil­i­ty. I will not give the lev­el of that prob­a­bil­i­ty now; I will leave that for the oth­er tech­ni­cal peo­ple, but they may be missed.”

Stew­art added, “Def­i­nite­ly the south­ern part of it (Grena­da), if it’s go­ing to im­pact, cer­tain­ly it will be the south­ern tip of Grena­da which, as you know, St George’s, that is a south­ern part of the is­land.”