Decline in La Brea sales after ‘fish kill’

BEACHES at La Brea remain in a mess, with dead fish carpeting the popular Point Sable and Carat Shed beaches.

The recent apparent fish kill along the southwestern coastline is also affecting fishermen, who have reported drastic drops in sales.

President of the La Brea Fisher-folk Association Alvin La Borde lamented: “Fishermen had to sell their catch at a 50 per cent lower cost because of this fish kill. The wholesale price of fish is $30, and during the last five days fishermen had to reduced their price to $15.”

He said the last few days had been nothing short of a nightmare for fishermen, who have to work on beaches polluted with dead fish.

He was optimistic about the abundance of herring, salmon and king fish because of the coming rains, but said the reports of dead fish were scaring customers away.

La Borde met with other fishermen on Monday at the La Brea Fishing Port to discuss the issues affecting them.

“Members are speculating that it is because of the offshore projects planned for the Gulf of Paria that the dead fishes are deliberately dumped in La Brea so there will be low records of fish sales.”

The first sighting of dead fish was on Monday at Carat Shed Beach; later in the week dead fish began washing up at Point Sable. La Borde called on the Siparia Regional Corporation to help clean up the beaches, but said no government agencies had shown up. He is now calling on the Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, Clarence Rambharat, to look into the fish kill.

In a statement yesterday, the EMA’s Emergency Response and Investigations Unit (ERI) said its investigations revealed the excessive quantity of fish –comprising herring, catfish, and mullet – was the result of a “bait dump” either from a trawler or gill net fishing vessel.

“Bait dump” refers to fishermen’s indiscriminate disposal of unwanted catches.