Trini fisherman dies at sea

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

What be­gan as a sto­ry of hope af­ter the six crew mem­bers of the St Vin­cent VII were found alive took a trag­ic turn yes­ter­day, with one of the res­cued fish­er­men, Trinida­di­an na­tion­al An­tho­ny Mur­ray, dy­ing aboard the ves­sel that saved them.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the six fish­er­men sur­vived nine days adrift in a life raft af­ter the St Vin­cent VII re­port­ed­ly sank off the coast of French Guiana fol­low­ing a fire on board the ves­sel.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the Mar­vel Kite res­cued the fish­er­men on Tues­day and be­gan pro­vid­ing emer­gency med­ical care while en route to Bar­ba­dos, where it was ini­tial­ly sched­uled to dock yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, the crew sub­se­quent­ly changed their fi­nal des­ti­na­tion to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The res­cued crew mem­bers were iden­ti­fied as Trinida­di­ans Mur­ray, 65, Shan­non Mo­hammed, 39, Kevin Fonteil­lo, 46 and Alex Burn­ley, 38; Guyana’s Es­h­war Per­saud, 39, the ves­sel’s cap­tain, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines na­tion­al Ru­pert Charles, 55.

How­ev­er, in an up­date yes­ter­day from the ves­sel to Bar­ba­dos mar­itime au­thor­i­ties, which Guardian Me­dia over­saw, it was re­vealed that Mur­ray was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion fol­low­ing the res­cue. Mar­vel Kite crew mem­bers re­port­ed­ly strug­gled to feed him but he was on­ly able to con­sume small amounts of oral re­hy­dra­tion so­lu­tion. He lat­er de­vel­oped se­vere breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and was placed on oxy­gen sup­port. De­spite those ef­forts, Mur­ray’s con­di­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed rapid­ly and he died be­fore the Mar­vel Kite reached its fi­nal des­ti­na­tion last night.

The same up­date al­so warned that an­oth­er res­cued crew mem­ber’s con­di­tion was de­te­ri­o­rat­ing, al­though no fur­ther de­tails were re­leased.

Guardian Me­dia was able to ver­i­fy Mur­ray’s death via ma­rine sources in both Bar­ba­dos and St Vin­cent. Those sources al­so con­firmed that the Mar­vel Kite yes­ter­day changed its in­tend­ed fi­nal des­ti­na­tion from Bar­ba­dos to St Vin­cent but were un­able to say why.

How­ev­er, that in­for­ma­tion stood in con­trast to a T&T Min­istry of De­fence state­ment ear­ly yes­ter­day which said the six res­cued fish­er­men were in “rea­son­ably good health with no re­mark­able in­juries.”

The min­istry’s re­lease added that the fish­er­men were lo­cat­ed by the Mar­vel Kite ap­prox­i­mate­ly 349 nau­ti­cal miles east of Ga­le­o­ta and were ex­pect­ed to be brought ashore with­in four hours af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard arranged a ren­dezvous with the com­mer­cial tanker ves­sel.

Soon af­ter this, how­ev­er, rel­a­tives ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribed as poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion from of­fi­cials on the res­cue ef­fort.

Aman­da Suraj, the wife of res­cued fish­er­man Shan­non Mo­hammed, said she had not been able to speak with her hus­band de­spite the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s an­nounce­ment on the res­cue. She al­so crit­i­cised the min­istry’s state­ment in­di­cat­ing the men would be re­turned with­in four hours, say­ing fam­i­lies had re­ceived lit­tle in­for­ma­tion about their where­abouts or med­ical con­di­tion.

Mean­while, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS) cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Gary Aboud said the out­come was a bless­ing af­ter a pe­ri­od of in­tense anx­i­ety.

“Thank God. Al­though we were go­ing out of our minds, I was try­ing to get the fam­i­ly to brace them­selves for the worst news. They kept say­ing, ‘Have faith, have faith,’” Aboud said.

How­ev­er, he ar­gued that the in­ci­dent had ex­posed weak­ness­es in re­gion­al mar­itime co­or­di­na­tion and emer­gency re­sponse sys­tems.

“It high­lights the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of us hav­ing a syn­chro­nised re­gion­al re­sponse. There is no con­nec­tion be­tween Trinidad, Venezuela, Guyana, Suri­name, Grena­da, An­tigua and oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries. When ac­ci­dents hap­pen at sea, we have to re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly,” he said.

Aboud al­so called for an over­haul of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fish­eries leg­is­la­tion and stronger safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards for mariners.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has one of the old­est fish­eries leg­is­la­tions on the plan­et. We need some form of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to en­sure peo­ple are prop­er­ly trained to im­ple­ment safe­ty mea­sures at sea,” he said.

The St Vin­cent VII crew had been miss­ing since their ves­sel caught fire while op­er­at­ing in the At­lantic near the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Suri­name and French Guiana. The ves­sel left Ch­aguara­mas on Ju­ly 6 and caught fire and sank on Ju­ly 13

The op­er­a­tional up­date sug­gest­ed the fish­er­men sur­vived by aban­don­ing the burn­ing ves­sel and spend­ing nine days aboard a life raft be­fore be­ing spot­ted by the pass­ing Mar­vel Kite.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram and Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge for com­ment yes­ter­day, but calls and mes­sages to their mo­bile phones went unan­swered.

How­ev­er, in an­oth­er me­dia re­lease last night, the Min­istry of De­fence con­firmed Mur­ray’s death.

It con­firmed it was ad­vised by the Mar­vel Kite crew that it agreed to di­vert to St Vin­cent for the de­liv­ery of his body and the for­mal de­c­la­ra­tion of his death there. Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that Mur­ray al­so resided on that is­land.

The re­lease said the re­main­ing crew mem­bers were to re­ceive med­ical treat­ment there, adding once cleared they would be re­turned home by the T&T Air Guard. The min­istry al­so apol­o­gised for the de­lay in mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, but said this was be­cause it want­ed to no­ti­fy Mur­ray’s fam­i­ly first.

The min­istry al­so thanked the Mar­vel Kite crew for its as­sis­tance in res­cu­ing the fish­er­men and of­fered its con­do­lences to Mur­ray’s fam­i­ly.