Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

A for­eign jour­nal­ist be­lieves in­for­ma­tion on cell phones, which may have been aboard a mys­tery boat found off the coast of Ma­yaro on Sat­ur­day, could have been used to find out more about the dead peo­ple in the ves­sel.

The de­com­pos­ing bod­ies of five peo­ple were seen aboard the boat, which bore a strong sim­i­lar­i­ty to a sit­u­a­tion in To­ba­go in 2021.

On Sun­day, how­ev­er, the T&T Coast Guard said it lost the pirogue con­tain­ing the de­com­pos­ing bod­ies of five uniden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als dur­ing a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion.

Coast Guard PRO, Lieu­tenant Khadi­ja Lamy, ex­plained, “Ef­forts to se­cure the ves­sel were ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing due to its frag­ile con­di­tion.”

At 12.45 am Sun­day, Lamy said the crew suc­cess­ful­ly at­tached a tow­line and be­gan trans­port­ing the ves­sel to­wards main­land Trinidad.

How­ev­er, at 4 am, the tow­line sep­a­rat­ed in rough seas east of Ma­yaro and the ves­sel drift­ed out of sight, Lamy added.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press (AP) jour­nal­ist Re­na­ta Brito said the most re­cent boat found could have been a Mau­ri­tan­ian fish­ing ves­sel, used to trans­port West African mi­grants to the Span­ish Ca­nary Is­lands in the At­lantic Ocean.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Brito said the lat­est dis­cov­ery was trag­ic, not­ing it was un­for­tu­nate that the ves­sel and bod­ies were lost dur­ing ef­forts to sal­vage it for fur­ther en­quiries.

Brito vis­it­ed T&T in 2023 as part of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion with the AP and Red Cross in iden­ti­fy­ing the bod­ies found aboard a boat found off the coast of Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go, two years ear­li­er.

She said the key to crack­ing that case and con­firm­ing the iden­ti­ties of the men at that time was un­lock­ing cell­phones found aboard the ves­sel to ac­cess the con­tact lists and search for po­ten­tial fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“Peo­ple try­ing to mi­grate through these non-of­fi­cial chan­nels, they don’t al­ways car­ry their pass­ports ... there are a lot of peo­ple who have been re­port­ed miss­ing on the oth­er side of the ocean.

“The best bet that we have, if they don’t have doc­u­ments on them, is to go through the cell­phones, be­cause the cell­phones usu­al­ly have con­tact lists, be­cause that way is the fastest way to find the rel­a­tives and friends of those peo­ple who un­for­tu­nate­ly died at sea.”

With­out cell­phones and doc­u­men­ta­tion to pro­vide clues on their iden­ti­ty or even their coun­try of ori­gin, Brito said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be even more chal­leng­ing as it would re­quire a probe span­ning mul­ti­ple coun­tries.

Brito added that while mi­grants leave West Africa and at­tempt to ven­ture to the Span­ish Ca­nary Is­lands or Eu­rope, the trade winds and cur­rents can push them off course as far as the Caribbean.

“This has hap­pened in Brazil, this has hap­pened in Turks and Caicos, this has hap­pened in Nicaragua and many oth­er lo­ca­tions of the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca where these boats from West Africa ap­pear and the au­thor­i­ties have no idea what they’re deal­ing with.”

She not­ed, how­ev­er, that au­thor­i­ties in these ar­eas can be over­whelmed by the scope of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, as in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies like the Red Cross, me­dia out­lets and oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions are left to do their part in trac­ing the ori­gins of the mi­grants.