THA Environment Secretary: No plans to designate exclusive jet ski beaches in Tobago

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Sec­re­tary of En­vi­ron­ment Dar­ren Hen­ry says the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has no in­ten­tion of des­ig­nat­ing any beach ex­clu­sive­ly for jet ski use.

His com­ments fol­low a meet­ing on Mon­day be­tween jet ski and reef boat op­er­a­tors, where the idea of ded­i­cat­ed zones was raised.

Jet ski op­er­a­tors said they are com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing safe­ty stan­dards in the sec­tor and pre­vent­ing a re­peat of last Wednes­day’s fa­tal ac­ci­dent at Pi­geon Point beach, which claimed the life of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie. Three rel­a­tives were al­so in­jured when a jet ski en­tered a bathing-on­ly zone at the pop­u­lar site. The in­ci­dent has sparked a na­tion­al de­bate on ma­rine safe­ty in shared recre­ation­al wa­ters.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Hen­ry said dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing with stake­hold­ers, but the over­all ap­proach is for op­er­a­tors and beach users to co­ex­ist with­in the same spaces un­der clear­er reg­u­la­tion.

“Peo­ple does bathe on all the beach­es in To­ba­go, it’s just the jet skis now would be out like 200 to 300 feet from the beach­front. Nor­mal bathers not go­ing out so far,” he said.

Hen­ry said ex­ist­ing poli­cies will be en­forced to en­sure safe­ty com­pli­ance.

“So they wouldn’t dri­ve reck­less or dri­ve close to where the bathers are — that is the in­ten­tion. In some ar­eas they would not be able to op­er­ate. We ain’t fin­ish work out every­thing as yet, but there might be some re­stric­tions in some places,” he said.

He added that dis­cus­sions are con­tin­u­ing with the Coast Guard and the po­lice re­gard­ing en­force­ment of the reg­u­la­tions.

How­ev­er, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk said in a sep­a­rate in­ter­view that the po­lice ser­vice cur­rent­ly lacks the per­son­nel and equip­ment re­quired for ded­i­cat­ed ma­rine pa­trols.

He said the pos­si­ble re­vival of a river­ine unit, dor­mant for decades, is be­ing con­sid­ered.

“It is in con­sid­er­a­tion but that is a dis­cus­sion at an­oth­er lev­el. It is above my pay grade. If it is that all the things are fi­nalised maybe we could have a re­cruit­ment done to fa­cil­i­tate. As it stands now, we don’t have a (po­lice) river­ine or coastal unit in To­ba­go. It is just about ex­tend­ing it to To­ba­go by hav­ing the re­sources to do it. We don’t have that right now,” he said.

Mean­while, Buc­coo tour op­er­a­tor De­von said he dis­agreed with re­stric­tions an­nounced by the En­vi­ron­ment Di­vi­sion, which has stat­ed that jet skis are pro­hib­it­ed at the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park, Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park and Buc­coo beach.

De­von said jet ski ac­tiv­i­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly high in de­mand at the Ny­lon Pool and No Man’s Land, both with­in the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park.

“In the Ny­lon Pool, when the glass-bot­tom boats make their trips to Coral Gar­dens and stop at the Ny­lon Pool to let the peo­ple bathe, most of the jet skis does come there. They does get the rentals of the jet skis and the chairs (ba­nana boat) to sit down for the jet skis to pull. It is there they does get the most rental,” he said.

“If they lock off the ma­rine park and is on­ly Buc­coo alone they op­er­at­ing from, they ain’t gonna get much rent. Most of the time peo­ple go No Man’s Land or Ny­lon Pool they does want a jet ski to rent.”

He said the area is large enough for jet skis to op­er­ate safe­ly if prop­er­ly man­aged.

“It’s a big, open park. I don’t feel it have a prob­lem in the park, it is a big, open area,” he said.

De­von added that op­er­a­tors al­ready pro­vide safe­ty brief­in­gs to cus­tomers be­fore rent­ing jet skis, in­clud­ing in­struc­tions on use and emer­gency pro­ce­dures.

Buc­coo fish­er­man George, 62, al­so weighed in, say­ing the is­sue is not jet ski launch­ing but reg­u­la­tion of where they are al­lowed to op­er­ate.

“They have to put things in place for where it can or can­not go. The launch­ing is safe,” he said.

“You have to put a des­ig­nat­ed place for where to ride the jet skis. You can’t just go out be­tween peo­ple. Put some mark­ers in place.”