Tag Archives: safety equipment
Teamwork triumphs over trouble
Preparation met opportunity last week off Cape San Blas, when a team of first responders plucked a group of longline grouper fishermen off a boat sinking in rough waters on Christmas Eve morning. No trips to hospitals were needed for the captain and four crew members of the F/V Miss Adley, following the rescue Thursday morning, Dec. 24 by members of South Gulf County Volunteer Fire Department’s water safety and rescue team of first responders. >click to read< 07:15
Neglected safety gear on fishing boats endanger fishermen – If it’s not maintained, it’s likely not going to work
“It’s one thing to go out and buy all this for your vessel, but if it’s not maintained it’s likely not going to work for you when you need it,” said Matthew Duffy, a safety adviser with the association. Duffy has seen survival suits full of holes, rotted ropes, and life rings tied so tightly they couldn’t be used. “We did a man-overboard drill where we got the crew involved and they got their immersion suits out,” said Duffy. “One crew member opened it up and there was a squirrels’ nest in one of them, you know, chewed right through the suit,,, >click to read< 07:40
Ocean Signal Introduces Compact Float-Free EPIRB
The new EPIRB1 Pro features a 30 percent reduction in size compared to other EPIRBs, a 10-year battery life and a retail price that makes it one of the most affordable EPIRBs on the market. Providing an essential link to emergency services for both recreational and commercial vessels, the Ocean Signal beacon complies with IMO regulations that require an automatic release housing to be provided for mandatory fitted EPIRBs. The SafeSea EPIRB1 Pro is designed to release automatically from the Category 1 Auto Deploy Bracket once submerged in water and float free from a sinking vessel. (This device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the FCC in the United States. This device is not, and may not be offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.) >click to read< 10:16
PFDs: Encourage fishermen to wear lifejackets while on deck – Safety training and equipment saved lives
The Polaris sank so rapidly that skipper Gordon Mills only had time to send out a Mayday to the coastguard before the vessel became submerged. But it was local fishing vessel, the Lynn Marie, which arrived first on scene. The skipper and a crew member from Polaris had been in the water for at least 15-20 minutes before help arrived. Skipper of the Lynn Marie feared the worst as they arrived at the scene as the Polaris had already gone below the water. He stopped his engine and heard two men in the water shouting. >click to read< 07:38
Lifejacket could have avoided Shetland fisherman’s death, FAI finds
The death of a fisherman working off Shetland could have been avoided if he wore a lifejacket, a Fatal Accident Inquiry has found. As a result a sheriff has called for it to be mandatory for all fishermen to wear a lifejacket while working on deck. Scott James Rennie, 31, died on June 23, 2016, at the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick. An hour before his death he was working on the fishing vessel King Challenger. >click to read< 19:55
Crew abandons ship safely to Survitec Liferaft when vessel erupts in flames
Two fishermen whose boat caught fire off the coast of Land’s End, UK, successfully evacuated into a Survitec liferaft and from there were taken ashore by Falmouth Coastguard. The pair activated the Survitec Seasava liferaft and abandoned Ocean Harvest, when it caught fire. Ocean Harvest was equipped with a SOLAS-approved Seasava Pro-ISO liferaft, which was developed for smaller vessels with limited deck space and is required to be serviced at three-year intervals. >click to read< 12:04
Simple fix for winch injuries not being used by seiners; Experts want to find out why
The most common gear on a seine boat is one of the most deadly – the rotating capstan winch used for winding ropes. Here’s a sampler “The deck winch is the most powerful thing on the boat. It’s the scariest piece of machinery that we work with.” “The corner of my raincoat caught under the capstan and started wrapping around. It snapped my head back and broke my neck.”,,, A simple E-Stop device has been available for over 10 years to prevent winch injuries. >click to read< 17:23
Fishing Industry sees workers compensation rates hit 20-year low thanks to safety campaigns
Stuart MacLean says it was a particularly dark event that helped spark a culture change when it comes to safety in the fishing industry: the sinking of the Miss Ally. Five young men from southwest Nova Scotia were lost at sea when their fishing boat was hammered by a raging storm in 2013. The incident gripped fishing villages everywhere, and MacLean, CEO of the Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia, believes it had a dramatic effect on the way fishermen approach safety today. “What’s happened in that sector is people have moved from knowing about it to caring about it,” he said. “And I think what people said is, ‘It’s not OK to keep losing people at sea.'” click here to read the story 18:12
Fishermen in Orkney launch appeal for safety equipment
Fishermen in Orkney have started a crowdfunding appeal to raise money towards state-of- the- art radio rescue equipment, which could mean the difference between life and death at sea. The money raised through the online fundraiser JustGiving will support an application from the Orkney Fisheries Association to the European Maritime Fisheries Fund (EMFF). No public funds are normally made available for safety gear for fishermen despite the high fatalities in the industry. The association explains “Our fishermen are dads, boyfriends, husbands, pals, sons and brothers. We want to make sure that they have the same chance to come home safe from work as everyone else. However their work can be more dangerous than everyone else’s and sadly every year some are lost at sea.” Read the rest here 16:23
New fishery safety standards to affect about 20,000 Canadian boats
A cool head, safety training and a decision to keep survival suits handy kept Martin d’Entremont and his crew alive when things went terribly wrong on board the Poseidon Princess, 102 kilometres off southwest Nova Scotia in the early morning hours of Jan.31, 2015. “I never dreamed she would go so fast,” says d’Entremont, 57, a veteran skipper from West Pubnico, N.S. The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown. What is clear is that safety procedures on board the Poseidon Princess saved lives as the boat slid under the waves, its lights winking out and engines shutting off in the darkness. Read the story here 08:19
Pacific Danger and Dungeness
While the opening of the fishery is an exciting period for crab fishermen, it’s also a time to hone in on safety. Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and Dungeness crab fishing is one of the most deadly of all west coast commercial fisheries. [email protected] 08:51
