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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 36 Number 7
March 2009
Join collaboration to improve winch safety
Fishermen have long been aware of the hazards of winches, which can mangle fingers, hands, arms, and legs in an instant. Some captains and owners have tried to take steps to prevent human contact with the rotating drum, yet tragedies still occur.
On Jan. 27, veteran fisherman Bill Meldrum, 53, died when his legs were crushed in a rotating drum winch. He was trawling off Manasquan Inlet, NJ on the 65' Lydia J, a boat he captained and co-owned, when the accident happened.
New Jersey State Police officers who arrived by rescue boat administered CPR and personnel from Coast Guard Station Manasquan Inlet also responded, but they could not save him.
Bill Meldrum was a member of the Fishermen’s Dock Co-op in Point Pleasant Beach. Fellow co-op member and long-time fisherman Jim Lovgren said he understood that the accident happened when Meldrum was guiding the cable along the deck to the winch, slipped, hit his head, and was pulled feet-first into the winch.
Meldrum was widely viewed as a well-seasoned fisherman, with experience in a variety of fisheries in addition to the yellowtail and flounder fishing he was engaged in when he died. In published reports, his wife said that he was very careful and “never took a chance.”
Still, this happened. As it turns out, it happens a lot.
A recently released study by the Coast Guard, titled “A Review of Lost Fishing Vessels & Crew Fatalities, 1992–2007,” reported that about three quarters of all commercial fishing fatalities are attributed to flooding, sinking, capsize, and man overboard. The next largest group of accident types included fishermen who were struck by or caught in lines or other equipment. Between 1992 and 2007, there were 59 fatalities in this category, including 20 who died as a result of winch entrapment.
Drum winches are hazardous to fishermen working nearby because they rotate. But the risk of injury is further heightened because the on-off controls for the winch are frequently many steps, even many feet, away from the winch itself.
Sometimes the off-switch is in the pilothouse or on a bulkhead, completely out of reach of the fisherman who is guiding a cable into the winch.
It is important to train crewmen in the proper operation of winches. Make sure that everyone on board knows where the controls are and how to turn the winch off in case of an emergency. Also, advise crewmen to keep an eye on each other during winch operation activities.
West Coast answer
The winch hazard problem has been recognized on the West Coast for years, where many have lost fingers, hands, and arms caught in the seine rope being brought in by the capstan winches widely used in the Northwest.
In Alaska, after initial meetings with fishermen in 2002, injury epidemiologists and engineers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Anchorage Field Station collaborated with vessel owners, seining fishermen, and winch manufacturers to design an “e-stop” for capstan winches.
The e-stop, which was put into use last year, is made of readily available materials and can be either manufactured or retrofitted into the capstan. Because it is integral to the capstan, a fisherman in trouble can stop the winch in seconds. And it can be reset by pressing a second button some distance away from the winch.
So far, the Alaska fishermen who have installed the e-stop into their capstans are reportedly very satisfied with it. Fortunately, no one has yet had to use it.
The device and the collaborative process that produced it are documented in this paper: Lincoln JM, Lucas DL, McKibbin RW, Woodward CC, and Bevan JE. (2008) “Reducing Commercial Fishing Deck Hazards with Engineering Solutions for Winch Design.” Journal of Safety Research. 39: 231–235.
Let’s do it here
To address the problem with East Coast drum winches, I’d like to replicate the collaborative process used in Alaska by bringing some of the people who worked on it to the East Coast to meet with fishermen and others with the goal of adapting the e-stop or inventing a different device for testing on drum winches.
By applying our collective experience and wisdom, we may arrive at several workable alternatives. Let’s do this in memory of Bill Meldrum. Anyone interested in participating in this design collaboration may contact me by phone at (617) 432-3327 or e-mail at <abackus@hophp.harvard.edu>. Or get in touch with Jim Lovgren at <lovgren3@comcast.net>.
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