Pres­i­dent of the All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA), Cur­tis Dou­glas, is call­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, hop­ing the new ad­min­is­tra­tion will fi­nal­ly end what he de­scribed as decades of il­le­gal fish­ing in To­ba­go’s wa­ters.

In No­vem­ber 2023, a del­e­ga­tion from Bar­ba­dos and To­ba­go, on the in­struc­tion of then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, held a vir­tu­al dis­cus­sion on con­cerns raised by To­ba­go fish­er­men. They claimed their Bar­ba­di­an coun­ter­parts were over­fish­ing fly­ing fish.

Con­tin­ued di­a­logue was agreed up­on and a de­ci­sion was tak­en for both sides to en­ter in­to ne­go­ti­a­tion for a new Fish­ing Agree­ment in the fu­ture.

But To­ba­go’s fish­er­men say noth­ing has changed.

Dou­glas has called on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­tect To­ba­go’s ma­rine re­sources.

“We be­lieve Venezuela must have a li­cence. And al­so, the Ba­jans must have a li­cence,” Dou­glas told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day dur­ing an in­ter­view in Scar­bor­ough. “We just throw­ing it out as a max­i­mum base­line fig­ure of US$3,000 if they want to come to our wa­ters to catch our fly­ing fish.”

Dou­glas claimed for­eign ves­sels from Venezuela and Bar­ba­dos were still be­ing al­lowed to en­ter To­ba­go’s wa­ters il­le­gal­ly, us­ing fish­ing lights that at­tract fly­ing fish and oth­er catch, leav­ing lo­cal fish­er­men with very few every sea­son.

He said it was al­so af­fect­ing To­ba­go’s food se­cu­ri­ty.

“We are starv­ing for fly­ing fish, right now,” he said. “And if we do not pro­tect our wa­ters, we are go­ing to lose the one thing that feeds our peo­ple and brings in in­come for so many fam­i­lies. The Gov­ern­ment must act now.”

Dou­glas said Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has the ex­pe­ri­ence and lead­er­ship to tack­le the is­sue diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. He added that there was no time for de­lay.

“Once we could sit down and for­get pol­i­tics and study the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go... then we could build a bet­ter fu­ture for our fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.”