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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 32 Number 6
April 2005
Stability, drills emphasized at safety forum
FAIRHAVEN, MA - Federal safety laws have saved a lot of lives in recent years but there is still a long ways to go to make commercial fishing as safe as it should be.
That was the upshot of the Fishing Vessel Safety Forum held on March 19.
Jim Herbert, chairman of the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Advisory Committee (CFIVSAC) summed up much of what was heard during the day’s presentations this way.
“Training, drills, stability, and the effects of the management regime – We have to move ahead on formalizing these things and get them incorporated into people’s regular activities,” he said.
The forum, which was organized by the Northeast Maritime Institute following the Dec. 20 loss of the scalloper Northern Edge and five of her crew, drew a modestly sized but interested audience of boat owners, Coast Guard officials, naval architects, fishery managers, and marine safety experts from around the country and beyond.
The opening speaker was Peggy Barry, the fishing vessel safety advocate who was compelled to get involved in the campaign for national regulations after her son Peter died following the sinking of an unseaworthy boat off Alaska in 1985.
Barry and her husband, Robert, helped push through the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act (CFIVSA) of 1988 – the first substantive piece of safety legislation aimed at commercial fishermen.
However, the act was the end result of tremendous compromise.
“There was no inspection, no licensing, but it did mandate survival equipment and EPIRBs,” she said. “The legislation included one out of three. The survival equipment and a modest amount of training saves lives when boats go down but obviously we want to avoid boats going down.”
New rules coming
Rear Adm. David Pekoske, commander of the Coast Guard First District, notified the audience that new rules may in fact be coming.
On Dec. 13, the Coast Guard published a heads-up announcement that it intends to issue a notice of proposed rule-making in July that will propose adding new rules and clarifying existing ones for fishing vessels.
According to the announcement, the Coast Guard will propose to:
• Establish rules on stability and watertight integrity for fishing vessels under 79’;
• Institute regulations for the carriage of immersion suits in seasonally cold waters;
• Require mandatory logging of already required drills; and
• Require evidence of training and assurances that personnel who are required to be trained are current in their training.
“The Coast Guard’s inclination is to try voluntary (requirements),” Pekoske said. “If they don’t work, we move toward mandatory.”
Support needed
Noting that previous efforts to establish stability criteria through the regulatory process had prompted an industry outcry of “too costly, too confusing,” Pekoske asked those at the forum for support when the rule-making process opens up.
“The challenge is for all of us to try to improve the system, to move forward,” he said.
In a later question-and-answer exchange, Cliff Goudey, director of the Center for Fisheries Engineering Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant Program, suggested the Coast Guard did not always take a leadership role in safety matters.
“In addition to effective opposition from some industry members, the Coast Guard in some cases has gone behind,” Goudey said. “If the industry were to change and say ‘enough is enough – we want to be regulated,’ will the Coast Guard support them?”
Pekoske replied, “That would definitely change the dynamic.”
He added that the towing vessel industry had done just that “and now we have regulations.”
SAR not compromised
During his remarks, Pekoske took head-on the question of whether security responsibilities have trumped the Coast Guard’s search and rescue mission since the agency became part the US Department of Homeland Security in 2002.
The rear admiral pointed out that his background was in search and rescue and that he had served as commander of Group Shinnecock in New York and as the commander of the Marine Safety Office Long Island Sound.
“Safety at sea is a top mission of the Coast Guard. Security is a top mission, too. They do not conflict at all,” Pekoske said. “Our ability to do our (safety) mission has been enhanced by our security mission. We now have more people, improved communications, and massive upgrading (of assets and equipment). Safety has never taken a back seat.”
CFIVSAC concerns
As a fisherman and in his capacity as CFIVSAC chairman, Jim Herbert has delved into the causes of many tragedies. At the start of his presentation, he showed a photo he took of a boat clearly top-heavy with pots steaming out of an Alaskan port. The vessel went down three weeks later with heavy loss of life.
The CFIVSAC, he explained, was established by the CFIVSA of 1988 to advise, consult, report, and make recommendations to the Coast Guard regarding marine safety issues.
The committee is made up of 10 industry representatives and seven others including representatives of the general public, manufacturing, education, insurance, and a naval architect or surveyor.
“The key word in this is ‘advisory,’” Herbert said, suggesting that the committee’s recommendations were not always acted on.
At this point, he said, the CFIVSAC has come up with a number of topics it believes are urgent enough for the Coast Guard to consider as “action items.”
Action items
Top on the list is stability criteria. Second was stability training, which Herbert said needs to be “practical, hands on, and engaging” in order to clearly communicate to fishermen how they should operate their vessels.
Training and drills came next. “If there is no enforcement, certain people will choose to ignore it,” Herbert said. “We need to make the expectations clear and make the consequences of not meeting those expectations clear.”
Next, he called for mandatory dockside exams. Herbert pointed out that such a program has been criticized as being too expensive, but noted that Coast Guard crews often spend hours going over a vessel during at-sea boardings.
“They’re doing it at sea,” he said. “It would be more effective and more efficient at the dock.”
Herbert next called on the Coast Guard to get casualty investigation results out to the public much quicker. He said he is convinced there is a timeframe following a tragedy when the public is sensitized and engaged and that’s when information needs to flow.
“After the Arctic Rose sank in the Bering Sea with 15 persons lost, it took three years before the report came out and with weak recommendations in my opinion,” he said.
Finally, Herbert identified fishery management issues as they relate to safety at sea as “high on the list of fishermen’s concerns.”
“So what is the state of fishing vessel safety in America in 2005? I’d like to recommend that, 17 years after the (CFIVSA) was passed, it’s time for an independent organization like the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to analyze what’s happened, where we are now, and where we’re going in the future,” Herbert said.
Accident chain
William Simpson, a naval architect, told the forum audience that often times vessel sinkings are blamed on “stability” problems when the fact is most sinkings are the result of a chain of decisions and judgments made by the owner and operator.
He outlined the following fictitious scenario.
A man buys a well-built shrimp boat and takes it to a yard to have it converted for New England fisheries. The yard has experience with this sort of conversion and none of the boats it has worked on has had any trouble, so the owner decides to skip a costly stability check.
Down the line, times are tough. During the annual haul-out, the boatyard suggests the stuffing box is due for replacement at some point, but it should be OK for now.
Then it’s the end of the season and the vessel is scheduled to make one last trip, but the engine needs a part so departure is delayed by a few days. By the time the crew gets underway there’s a storm coming.
Trying to beat the weather, the crew loads the deck and puts the boards in the freeing ports. Everyone is busy and no one notices that the stuffing box has begun to leak and water is accumulating in the lazarette. It’s warm that night so someone has left the door to the engine room open.
The vessel lists and capsizes.
“This casualty will be blamed on stability,” Simpson said. “But stability is not just something an architect builds into a boat. It’s part of a stability consciousness.”
Dominos of disaster
Ted Harrington, the Coast Guard First District fishing vessel safety coordinator, gave a talk that echoed Simpson’s theme. He began by showing film footage of two at-sea rescues, followed by a chilling video clip of the disaster that befell the fishing vessel Sea King.
On Jan. 11, 1991, several Coast Guard units responded to a distress call from the 75’ trawler, which was taking on water near the mouth of the Columbia River off the Oregon coast. Four crewmen and four Coast Guardsmen were on board the boat as it was being escorted into port. “Looking good” was the comment on the tape about 90 seconds before – practically in sight of the breakwater – the vessel listed to port then rolled. One Coast Guardsman and two crewmen died.
“All fishing vessels have the potential to sink. Every person has the same potential to get hurt or worse,” Harrington said. “It will be the same thing next week, next month. Until we get a safety culture in this industry, no amount of regulation will make that big of a difference.”
Harrington, who trains Coast Guard boarding teams and gives talks to fishermen’s groups and schools, said he uses the image of dominoes standing in a row to make his key point.
“How many errors can a boat absorb before the last domino falls and someone dies?” he said.
Years of analyzing casualty reports has made it clear to the Coast Guard that 100-120 seconds often makes the difference between life and death.
His bottom line advice? Know enough to recognize the signs of trouble, don’t wait to ask for help, and be prepared to stay alive until rescuers arrive.
“People don’t understand that the helicopter is not running on the tarmac when they call. It has to be loaded, towed, and started up. It takes about a half-hour to launch. If you’re off Cape Cod, it will take (another) half-hour to get there,” Harrington said.
Added Capt. Mark Landry from the audience, “If you don’t get in a survival suit and get in a life raft and bring the EPIRB with you, there’s a high probability you will die.”
Courses offered
The Northeast Maritime Institute is offering six, free one-day safety courses on consecutive Saturdays from March 26 through April 30.
The Mayor’s Seafood Industry Advisory Task Force has scheduled several free basic safety and survival training workshops on weekends in April, May, and June.
When asked about the courses, Northeast Maritime Institute President Eric Dawicki encouraged fishermen to take both.
“Use both programs,” he said. “Go to different places and learn as much as you can.”
For more information on the Northeast Maritime Institute and its safety courses, call (800) 767-4024. For more information on the task force safety courses, call (508) 961-3000.
Lorelei Stevens
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