Families of 6 missing fishermen appeal to Govt for help

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

The fam­i­lies of six fish­er­men miss­ing aboard the fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII are call­ing for an in­ten­si­fied re­gion­al res­cue ef­fort and help from the T&T Gov­ern­ment, say­ing they are run­ning out of time as the search con­tin­ues with no con­firmed signs of their loved ones.

The miss­ing crew mem­bers are main­ly Trinida­di­an, along with a Guyanese cap­tain and a Vin­cent­ian na­tion­al.

Among those miss­ing are Trinida­di­an fish­er­man Shan­non Mo­hammed, crew mem­bers Kevin “Dougla” Fournil­lio, crew mem­bers iden­ti­fied on­ly as An­tho­ny and Alex, whose na­tion­al­i­ty has not yet been con­firmed.

The ves­sel’s cap­tain, Es­h­war “Shawnee” Per­saud, is Guyanese, while an­oth­er crew mem­ber is a Vin­cent­ian na­tion­al be­lieved to have joined the ves­sel in St Vin­cent.

The ves­sel de­part­ed Ch­aguara­mas on Ju­ly 6 and was lat­er re­port­ed to have caught fire in wa­ters in the French Guiana-Suri­name re­gion on Ju­ly 13.

For rel­a­tives, the last known mo­ments of the crew re­main a source of hope—a fi­nal pho­to­graph of the men work­ing in Suri­name and a short video record­ed by Per­saud show­ing the ves­sel on fire.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Aman­da Suraj, the wife of fish­er­man Mo­hammed, said fam­i­lies re­main des­per­ate for in­for­ma­tion. She said the last con­firmed in­for­ma­tion re­ceived was the cap­tain’s video show­ing the in­ci­dent and the ves­sel’s last known po­si­tion.

“That is the on­ly up­date we’ve re­ceived,” Suraj said.

“Fish­er­men at sea, ves­sels near­by have been search­ing, so they said, and no­body has got­ten any sign of any de­bris or any­thing at all.”

Suraj al­so raised con­cerns about whether near­by re­sources could have been mo­bilised soon­er, point­ing specif­i­cal­ly to an­oth­er ves­sel linked to the com­pa­ny that owns the ves­sel—Re­na­ta En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed.

She said the St Vin­cent VII had a sis­ter ves­sel, the San­ta Maria, which was al­so op­er­at­ing in the area at the time of the in­ci­dent and ques­tioned why it was not im­me­di­ate­ly redi­rect­ed to as­sist in the search.

Guardian Me­dia has not in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied the de­tails sur­round­ing the move­ments of the San­ta Maria, or the re­sponse ac­tions tak­en.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via phone from Guyana, Ma­ha­ranie Per­saud, wife of cap­tain Per­saud, said her last com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him came through a video call around 7 am, when he showed her what was hap­pen­ing aboard the ves­sel. Per­saud said the call end­ed short­ly af­ter­wards and she has not re­ceived fur­ther in­for­ma­tion about her hus­band’s con­di­tion.

“From the 13th to now, I’m not hear­ing any­thing about my hus­band,” she said.

She said she con­tact­ed mar­itime au­thor­i­ties seek­ing as­sis­tance but was di­rect­ed back to the com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing the ves­sel.

As the days pass, she said the emo­tion­al toll on the fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to grow.

“His moth­er is cry­ing. His sis­ters are cry­ing. They want Shawnee to come back home. We want Shawnee to come back home.”

Shan­non Mo­hammed’s moth­er, San­dra Mo­hammed, said the fam­i­ly is hold­ing on through faith while plead­ing for more as­sis­tance from re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties.

“We have heard noth­ing. All we’ve heard is that they are search­ing,” she said.

She ap­pealed to Caribbean gov­ern­ments, coast guards and mar­itime agen­cies to con­tin­ue search­ing.

“I need some­body, any Caribbean is­land, any coast guard, any­body, to go out and look for the boat. Not for my son alone, but for the whole crew.”

She de­scribed Shan­non as a brave and car­ing son, re­call­ing that he sur­vived a pre­vi­ous mar­itime in­ci­dent in 2010 and helped save an­oth­er per­son.

“God did it once, and I pray that God will do it again for him.”

As the search con­tin­ues across the south­ern Caribbean, rel­a­tives say they re­main hope­ful the six fish­er­men will be found alive.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to call the own­er of the ves­sel, Re­na­ta En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed, and Cari­com and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers for com­ment on the is­sue. How­ev­er, calls went unan­swered up to press time.