On Monday, October 16, 2017, a media release announced that an oil spill took place on Sunday, October 15th, in Chaguaramas, Trinidad.
If you look at the map, the spill location is a bay, north-west of Port of Spain, the Bay of Paria. The bay, hugged by the coasts of Trinidad and Venezuela has a northern opening to the Caribbean Sea, nicknamed the Mouths of the Dragon. Some of the oil will drift north, find the mouths of the dragon and enter the Caribbean. A Delta pilot flying over the area yesterday reports the shimmering stain is substantial.
Last time Trinidad had an oil spill, it took the oil three-four weeks to arrive here. Then my girlfriends hit the beach, with buckets and sieves to try to collect the gook off the white sand.
And that was Aruba’s response to the calamity. A motley crew beach clean-up. We need more than that this time, Trinidad needs to step on it. And the way it goes right now, the bureaucracy is moving in slow-mo.
I understand that the Institute of Marine Affairs (IMA) received a report from the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) of an oil spill near Carrere Island on at about 9am. (They like these long and impressive official names in the remnants of the British Empire.)
Three hours later the IMA accompanied EMA personnel to do a visual assessment of the impacted areas, samples were collected and sent to the laboratory.
Then on Monday 16th October 2017, an IMA team along with a representative from another ministry, the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries, joined the EMA, for a marine survey of the oil-impacted areas, they took some more samples to measure dissolved and dispersed hydrocarbons (DDPH) at oil-affected sites. They found many areas affected.
With the samples, they will try to fingerprint the oil found in order to determine its source; it’s a complex procedure, designed to reveal “whodunit,” so basically the spill area is a crime scene that must be investigated in order to clarify where the oil might have originated, and, hopefully, who spilled it.
But meanwhile clean up is delayed, the oil is spreading, and fishermen conduct emergency meetings.
Gary Abound, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011803891670, who lives in the area and belongs to an environmental organization, Fishermen and Friends of the Sea, reports the cleanup is minimal.
For the umpteenth time, they are circulating a petition addressed at the Honorable Minister of Energy of Trinidad and Tobago Franklin Khan, asking for permanent protection of their water!
We need BIG GUNS here, some international experts, as I said, the girls and their buckets on a Sunday, is not an appropriate response. Trinidad needs to deal with the mess faster!
Which reminds me that I owe you a story: On the night of the elections, September 22nd, 10:15pm, a tanker, by the name of Thayer, got stuck on a reef in Aruba, about 100 meters off shore, next to Renaissance Island. It came so close the Captain claims, following the request of a local tugboat, tasked with making a crew member exchange. At the time we were all glued to the TV, and the incident was reported on Face Book by a few die-hards, Captain Anthony Hagedoorn among them, but by morning, the tanker managed to unstick itself and anchored off shore below the lighthouse. We found out it was empty, and in the spirit of DODGING THE BULLET we were saved. Would you be surprised if I told you the Maritime Police asked the captain to take a sobriety test and he blew FOUT TIMES the permitted limit, twice. His blood alcohol numbers were off the chart. As a result, the Captain enjoyed our full-board jail hospitality for 10 days, and the tanker, with 24 crew members on board was under investigation for a number of days. The local authority also went on an inspection underwater, there is some broken coral and damage in the area. And the company and the Captain will be fined. We’re lucky!!
