Berbicians are concerned over dead fish that have been floating up in the Corentyne River, from No. 63 to No. 50 villages over the last few days.
Past president and member of the Upper Corentyne Chamber of Commerce David Subnauth told Stabroek News yesterday that persons should not eat fish from the river until the Ministry of Health conduct tests and advice if it is safe. It is suspected that the fish may have been poisoned.
When contacted, Minister of Agriculture Dr. Leslie Ramsammy told this newspaper that “poisoning at sea is unusual” and that his ministry would be carrying out tests to determine the cause of the fish dying.
According to Subnauth, hundreds of fish of “all sizes and species have been floating up” and residents are not sure what is happening. While he only learnt of the dead fish yesterday, he said a resident told him that it started earlier in the week in a “small quantity” and then increased.
He said members of the Chamber were sent to the check the situation and became disturbed. They would “appreciate if the health minister could give the problem priority and look into it immediately.”
In spite of the problem, he said fish is still being sold in the area but there are fears that if the fish continue to die it would result in a shortage.
Meanwhile, chairman of the No. 66 Fish Port Complex Indarpersaud Rampersaud told Stabroek News that he noticed a few dead “unscaled fish” when he went to No. 63 Beach on Sunday. He did not think it was a cause for alarm, he said, because he suspected that they were “trash fish” from “seabob trawlers.”
He learnt that a trawler was working in the Eversham/Whim area around the same time and said normally when the workers catch the unscaled fish, they would discard them overboard. He was also of the opinion that if the fish were poisoned, they would have been in different varieties. He was, however, at a loss over the real cause of the fish dying.
Another member of the complex and Chairman of the Berbice Anti-Piracy Com-mittee Pravinchandra Deodat told this newspaper that he too suspects that the dead fish were as a result of them being dumped by the trawler.
“They [trawler crew] catch fish by the tonnes and would take the ones they want and dump the rest overboard,” he claimed.
According to him, “it is not something new but people don’t know about it because they don’t dwell at sea and the fish would wash up mostly in the bushy area.”
