Fishermen and Friends of the Sea are mourning the death of an endangered whale shark that was first seen injured near Peake's Marina in Chaguaramas on Saturday.
00:00To some other news now, fishermen and friends of the sea are mourning the death of an endangered whale shark that was first seen injured near Peaks Marina in Chagaramus on Saturday.
00:12The animal had a visible back wound and was observed swimming in distress before disappearing into deep waters.
00:19By Tuesday morning, its carcass was found close to the Copacabana Hotel, just before the Coast Guard base.
00:25The Trinidad and Tobago Marine Mammal Stranding Network has been alerted.
00:31FFOS is now calling on authorities to urgently conduct an examination to determine whether the cause of death was a vessel strike, pollution or another preventable factor.
00:43FFOS are calling on the Honourable Minister of Agriculture and the Honourable Minister of Planning and the IMA and the EMA to ensure that there's a necropsy done on this whale.
00:55Because whales are rare. We used to have thousands of whales every year and the bait fish that they would feed on got decimated.
01:04So the whales starved or were hunted and killed, but they are an important part of our marine biodiversity and have a critical role to play.
01:13And the disappearance of the bait and the whale, a calling bell that our fishermen are also dying.
01:23And the fish that we eat, we need to properly understand how to protect it.
01:29So if we don't know, if the ministry doesn't do a necropsy on this whale to know what killed it, how would we know how to protect other whales?
01:39So we are saying that maybe it was a ship that propeller cut the whale.
01:46Maybe it was hydrocarbon contamination from all of the multiple chemicals that the oil companies discharge into our water recklessly and carelessly.
01:55Or maybe it was an industrial company, putting some kind of contaminant, maybe it was plastic waste or something else.
02:04Or maybe it was a seismic activity because they approve all kinds of, and the sound of the seismic destroys the creature's ability to navigate.
02:14And we know the science has shown us this.
02:18So we need some kind of profile.
02:20If we are to protect more species, was it plastic?
02:25All that white plastic and styrofoam that we refused to ban?
02:30This government is a good government, and we will ban it.
02:33But until then, there's so much in the ecosystems.
02:38We must do better.
02:39We must do better.
02:40Our silence and inaction are deadly.
02:45And with each death, we are not only losing a species, but we are losing a part of ourselves, our livelihoods, our food source, our future.
02:56It's not a light matter.
02:58Our marine space is sacred.
03:01And unless we treat it with the reverence and diligence and grace and spiritual sanctity that it should,
03:11we will soon find ourselves not only poorer in biodiversity, but poorer as a nation and a world.
03:19It's not the most popular image in Washington.
03:20So we're not going toì •ize matters now.
03:21We will actually comply with the springsite to output and donate to the glacier of Jesus Christ.
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