The Commercial Fishing industry has been flagged for some special attention by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, with the Agency's annual Watchlist for 2018 taking note of the growing number of accidents and fatalities that have been noted from their investigative work in recent years.
The Federal agency has tracked the number of fishing vessel incidents and fatalities across Canada from 2011-2017, with 2011, 203 and 2015 particularly bad for loss of life.
Expanding on the data to 2004 and including those findings from 2018 to mid October, shows that despite more awareness of safety issues, the fatality rate of this year, is the same as that of fourteen years ago.
The Watchlist, highlights the major safety focus for the agency in all of the transportation elements from across the nation.
Their work this year has identified the Commercial fishing industry as one which needs to address safety and at sea procedures as something that requires action by all stakeholders.
Developing and sustaining a strong safety culture is required to foster greater compliance with regulations, in particular with respect to vessel stability and the use of life-saving equipment.
The main thrust of the report identifies the risks to those in the industry and then offers up its recommendations towards better safety practices from all who participate in the fishery.
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| The Risks for fish harvesters (Click to enlarge) |
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| The recommendations from the Safety Review (Click to enlarge) |
While there are new safety policies in place and measures are reassessed regularly, the report notes that it will take leadership from industry and communities to help in reversing the startling findings of the dangers to those in the industry in 2018.
Some fishing associations have taken increasing leadership in developing guidelines for vessel modifications and stability. Some workers compensation boards have imposed fines to encourage safe work practices, and various organizations have launched education initiatives.
As a result, there are signs of behavioural change among fish harvesters, but it is not consistent across regions and fisheries. Unlike other provinces, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island still do not have workplace legislation that is applicable to fishing vessels. Cultural change takes time, and it is slowly evolving one wharf and one fish harvester at a time.
The full report of the fishing industry can be reviewed here,
The document is part of the larger Watchlist 2018 document on Safety which features a range of material and video presentations to help get the word out on safety issues.
The report was released on October 29th.
As we noted earlier today, the issue of marine safety in the fishing industry was explored in more detail with a report into the sinking of the Western Commander in April of this year, that incident resulted in the loss of one life owing to a medical emergency at the time.
You can review more notes on the North Coast fishing industry from our archive page here.
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