Carisa Lee

All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas has sent a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Ac­cord­ing to Dou­glas, the doc­u­ment, which was emailed and mailed, high­lights the con­cerns To­ba­go fish­er­men have with Bar­ba­di­an fish­er­men fish­ing in T&T wa­ters. He hopes Row­ley re­sponds by next Wednes­day.

Dou­glas claims Ba­jan fish­er­men are over­fish­ing in T&T’s ter­ri­to­ry, and it is af­fect­ing lo­cal fish­er­men eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

Ba­jan fish­er­man Dave Jack­son yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted to Guardian Me­dia that fly­ing fish were scarce in Bar­ba­dos and that’s why they are now ven­tur­ing in­to T&T’s wa­ters.

“We ain’t got no fly­ing fish in Bar­ba­dos wa­ters and the guys are tak­ing a chance to come down by you and get a few fish to feed the fam­i­ly,” Jack­son said.

Jack­son said re­cent­ly, fish­er­men tried catch­ing fly­ing fish in their wa­ters but came back emp­ty-hand­ed.

“The oth­er day, they say they doh catch noth­ing,” he added, not­ing this is why they are now ven­tur­ing in­to T&T wa­ters.

How­ev­er, he said he was un­aware of any an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween T&T and Ba­jan fish­er­folk over the is­sue. In fact, said when they come in­to T&T wa­ters, they are wel­comed, adding it’s al­so im­pos­si­ble for them to over­fish.

“I don’t think you have all the fish in Trinidad. We got noth­ing in Bar­ba­dos…there are bil­lions and bil­lions of fly­ing fish in the sea, so what if we get a cou­ple,” he said.

An­oth­er Ba­jan fish­er­man, Vic­tor O’Neal Dray­ton, echoed Jack­son’s state­ments. He said he was al­so not aware of any res­ur­rect­ed ten­sion be­tween the fish­er­men of the is­land.

He said be­cause of cli­mate change, fly­ing fish, which are a favourite Ba­jan sta­ple, mi­grat­ed clos­er to To­ba­go and they sim­ply fol­low the fish.

Both men be­lieve, how­ev­er, that a new fish­ing agree­ment is need­ed to fi­nal­ly re­solve the is­sue of en­croach­ing in each is­land’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

O’Neal Dray­ton said the con­tract should in­clude re­stric­tions on gear, how far Ba­jan fish­er­men can go, as well as the ex­pi­ra­tion dates. The last two agree­ments (1990 and 2009) were for one year, he said. Jack­son added that the agree­ment is not just be­tween them but gov­ern­ments as well.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne on Tues­day but there was no re­sponse up to yes­ter­day.

Calls to Chief of De­fence Staff Dar­ryl Daniel al­so went unan­swered. The T&T Coast Guard has been crit­i­cised by AT­FA for not mon­i­tor­ing T&T’s wa­ters to pre­vent il­le­gal fish­ing.