Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials are rac­ing against time to pre­vent a mix of oil and fu­el from reach­ing the coasts of To­ba­go, fol­low­ing the cap­siz­ing of an uniden­ti­fied ves­sel in wa­ters off the is­land yes­ter­day.

In an emer­gency me­dia con­fer­ence, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ex­plained that oil had been spot­ted hun­dreds of me­tres away from the over­turned ves­sel, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 me­tres south of Cove at Ca­noe Bay.

To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA) CEO Al­lan Stew­art said the oil had moved from Ca­noe Bay, head­ing north­west through Lit­tle Rock­ley Bay near Lam­beau and in­to Rock­ley Bay, Scar­bor­ough, span­ning just over eight kilo­me­tres.

Clean-up ef­forts be­gan yes­ter­day af­ter­noon through col­lab­o­ra­tion with TEMA, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, which is the cus­to­di­an of the Na­tion­al Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan and leads the In­ci­dent Com­mand Team in the event of a ma­jor spill, and Kaizen En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices, a com­pa­ny that spe­cialis­es in oil spills.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, Kaizen, which has equip­ment stored in Scar­bor­ough in the event of a spill, gave TEMA and the THA the green light to use the equip­ment “as we try our best to mit­i­gate against fur­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age from the oil spill.”

He added that TEMA has in stock and will use sphag­num peat moss, which en­cap­su­lates the crude oil that floats on the wa­ter’s sur­face and can sub­se­quent­ly be re­cov­ered with a large net.

Oth­er equip­ment and ser­vice providers have been en­gaged to re­spond to the spill and cap­sized boat.

“I am ad­vised that we have some spe­cial­ist divers on their way to To­ba­go. How­ev­er, it will be rel­a­tive­ly dark by the time they get here with their ves­sel. So, we had to go ahead and utilise ex­pe­ri­enced and PA­DI-cer­ti­fied divers from right in To­ba­go to be­gin some of the dis­cov­ery for us. Be­cause time is of the essence,” Au­gus­tine said.

Ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, To­ba­go’s De­part­ment of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and the En­vi­ron­ment co­or­di­nat­ed the re­sponse from land, while the T&T Coast Guard co­or­di­nat­ed the re­sponse at sea “to en­sure that we can mit­i­gate against fur­ther en­vi­ron­men­tal dam­age.”

The boat, which has uniden­ti­fied ori­gins and car­go, cap­sized some­time overnight Tues­day in­to yes­ter­day and is stuck on Cove Reef, prompt­ing con­cerns about the reef’s health as oil leaks.

How­ev­er, giv­en that the re­sponse had just be­gun, of­fi­cials could not pro­vide a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment. Au­gus­tine said, “We can’t, at this junc­ture, give you with cer­tain­ty some of those de­tails you’re ask­ing, and that’s why we have to send divers down. They will tell us whether it has reached the depths to where reefs are in the area and give us a quan­ti­fied kind of form, what the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact has been about this is­sue.”

Au­gus­tine al­so at­tempt­ed to al­lay fears for those con­cerned about To­ba­go’s fish stock, as no one should be mak­ing any catch in the area. He said most fish­er­folk fish miles out at sea, “where they’re nor­mal­ly safe to eat.”

He said, “I wouldn’t want to alarm to the ex­tent of say­ing that peo­ple should not buy fish around the is­land be­cause it’s not safe to eat. That’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case. Just avoid that area. And I as­sure you that most of our fish­er­folk are re­spon­si­ble mem­bers of the in­dus­try. They will not go fish­ing in the midst of the oil spill; they will go dis­tances much fur­ther away. So yes, you can safe­ly con­tin­ue to en­gage your lo­cal fish­er­men.”

Ac­cord­ing to TEMA and the THA, sev­er­al ar­eas are in the crosshairs of oil mov­ing on­shore based on its cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry. Au­gus­tine said oil will im­pact Lam­beau and Rock­ley Beach­es.

“There is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Mag­dale­na area may be im­pact­ed as well. We saw signs of it com­ing up to the roads to what is known as com­ing up to the port of Scar­bor­ough,” Au­gus­tine said.

For those wish­ing to take a trip to south­west­ern To­ba­go, Au­gus­tine cau­tioned against it.

“Let me warn fish­er­folk, those with ves­sels, jet skis, swim­mers, and whomev­er, please avoid the area as much as pos­si­ble. Don’t go pur­pose­ful­ly sight­see­ing or sail­ing in­to the area. It’s not an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go sight­see­ing.”

As oil and fu­el comes up on­to the shore­line, he al­so cau­tioned peo­ple to avoid the ar­eas for recre­ation­al use. “But we will be mov­ing as quick­ly as we can move to take care of the oil spill,” he said.