Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­spite get­ting no clues or leads on the where­abouts of five Ce­dros fish­er­men miss­ing at sea for six days yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives are stay­ing pos­i­tive.

“We are keep­ing hope. The on­ly thing is for us to pray and ask God for help. We are stay­ing pos­i­tive as a fam­i­ly. We are not giv­ing up. This is very hard to deal with,” said Cin­tra Seep­aul in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Seep­aul said she was grate­ful to the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team af­ter they joined the search for the miss­ing fish­er­men yes­ter­day.

Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat and his team ar­rived in Ce­dros around 6 am and dis­em­barked from Ica­cos Vil­lage on a boat at 9 am.

He said they vis­it­ed two of the fish­ing grounds on the Venezuela coast­line, where the fish­er­men would some­times fre­quent, and con­duct­ed a four-kilo­me­tre grid search.

How­ev­er, he said af­ter three hours noth­ing was found. “Our team was un­able to iden­ti­fy any float­ing de­bris dur­ing the search,” he said.

Last Sat­ur­day be­tween 4 pm and 5 pm, boat cap­tain David Seep­aul, 60, his son Da­vanan, 35, Braiy­er Ali, 21, Shi­va Seep­er­sad, 20, and Je­re­mi­ah Pasqual, 19, left on a ves­sel named Aman­da to fish in an area close to Venezue­lan wa­ters. They were ex­pect­ed to re­turn home lat­er that night or ear­ly next morn­ing.

Thank­ing the search team for their as­sis­tance, Cin­tra said her un­cle, David, has sev­en chil­dren, the youngest be­ing 12 years. She said Da­vanan has three chil­dren, the old­est of them nine years and youngest just a few months old.

Fol­low­ing com­plaints by rel­a­tives about the lack of re­sponse from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG), the TTCG yes­ter­day claimed the fam­i­ly nev­er con­tact­ed them di­rect­ly and de­nied their ves­sels were not work­ing.

Cin­tra, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed a re­port was made on Sun­day at the Ce­dros TTCG base.

In the re­lease, the TTCG said it was aware of re­ports con­cern­ing miss­ing per­sons aboard the pirogue Aman­da.

“How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to clar­i­fy that the TTCG’s Mar­itime Op­er­a­tions Co­or­di­nat­ing Cen­tre (MOCC) was not di­rect­ly con­tact­ed by the fam­i­lies of the miss­ing per­sons. There­fore, re­ports cir­cu­lat­ing in the me­dia in­di­cat­ing that the fam­i­lies con­tact­ed the TTCG and were told that the Coast Guard boats were not work­ing are in­ac­cu­rate,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The TTCG added that they had con­tact­ed the Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties to seek their as­sis­tance in lo­cat­ing the miss­ing ves­sel and the men.

“We are cur­rent­ly await­ing fur­ther in­for­ma­tion. The TTCG re­mains com­mit­ted to the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all our mariners and is pre­pared to as­sist in any way pos­si­ble.” The Coast Guard as­sured they will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and pro­vide up­dates as they be­come avail­able.