Tag Archives: fishing deaths
Amid fishing deaths, calls rise for small boats to have stability checks
After the Caledonian capsized off Vancouver Island in 2015 with three lives lost, the Transportation Safety Board called for all small fishing vessels to undergo a stability assessment and adhere to standards ensuring stability information “is adequate and readily available to the crew.” However, seven years later, Transport Canada says on its website that enacting the regulation would be “functionally challenging and prohibitively expensive for the industry.” The department declined a request for an interview with a senior official to provide further explanation. It’s a stance the Transportation Safety Board describes on its website as “unsatisfactory,” while a lawyer for the mother of a deckhand who died when the scallop dragger Chief William Saulis flipped over off Nova Scotia on Dec. 15, 2020 argues the federal government needs to act. >click to read< 11:50 – Search Results for “Caledonian” – fisherynation.com – Search Results for “Chief William Saulis” – fisherynation.com
Transportation Safety Board releases findings on Placentia Bay crab fishing deaths
The Transportation Safety Board says a modified boat, poor communications and the failure to wear life jackets all likely contributed to a boating accident in Placentia Bay last year where three men died while fishing crab. Their bodies were found in June 2015, after it was believed their boat capsized in strong winds. None of the men were wearing life jackets. As there were no witnesses or survivors, the TSB said it can’t say with certainty what happened, but pointed to key risk factors. Notably, the board said the boat owner hadn’t been using his regular crab-fishing vessel — he was using a smaller, 7.1-metre open boat he “hastily” modified for the job. The report said he was under pressure to fish, as he hadn’t caught any of his quota two weeks before the end of the fishing season. His main boat was being repaired and taking longer than expected; he couldn’t use the vessel licensed to his wife as it could only be used to fish her quota, the report said. Read the rest here 15:06
