Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) pres­i­dent Cur­tis Dou­glas is breath­ing a sigh of re­lief, fol­low­ing the re­cov­ery of a boat and en­gine which were stolen on Sat­ur­day night at Cour­land Bay.

The ves­sel, Ethiopia, owned by Elvis Bobb, was found aban­doned in the la­goon near No Man’s Land 24 hours lat­er with its $60,000 Yama­ha 75-horse­pow­er en­gine still in­tact.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the re­cov­ery, Dou­glas said the as­so­ci­a­tion felt a huge weight lift­ed off its shoul­ders. “That would have been one of our mem­bers on the bread­line. We would have had to find $120,000 (cost of boat and en­gine),” he said.

It was the sec­ond theft Bobb has suf­fered, af­ter ban­dits took his en­gine last year. 

In an in­ter­view ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Dou­glas called for the State of Emer­gency (SoE) to be en­forced in To­ba­go. He claimed there was a “car­tel of thieves” op­er­at­ing on the is­land, prey­ing on hard­work­ing fish­er­folk. He ap­pealed to the au­thor­i­ties to fol­low Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and get rid of all car­tels. “We want to get rid of this car­tel, this wicked, ma­li­cious crim­i­nal be­hav­iour hap­pen­ing to the fish­er­folk. We want this car­tel to be rid of. How much more should fish­er­folk be pun­ished?” Dou­glas asked. Be­fore the ves­sel was found, Dou­glas had de­scribed the in­ci­dent as a dou­ble blow for Bobb, as it was the mid­dle of the Lenten sea­son when rev­enue is high­est for fish­er­folk, with fish the pre­ferred menu for many Chris­tians.

Bobb said he had docked his boat Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon around 5.30 pm, but when he ar­rived around 5 am yes­ter­day, it was miss­ing. A re­port was made to the po­lice and the Coast Guard.

Dou­glas said he called for a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to crim­i­nal­i­ty on the is­land, more mar­itime pa­trols and cam­eras at the var­i­ous fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Fish­er­man Kirk Camp­bell be­lieves bet­ter light­ing at var­i­ous fish­ing fa­cil­i­ties would de­ter crim­i­nals. How­ev­er, he said au­thor­i­ties have re­ject­ed this idea as Cour­land Bay is a des­ig­nat­ed tur­tle nest­ing site and light­ing is pro­hib­it­ed.

Ef­forts to con­tact Sec­re­tary of Food Se­cu­ri­ty Wayne Clarke for a com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful, as he did not re­spond to calls and a What­sApp mes­sage.