Wear and Tear on Fishermen

By Sandra Dinsmore

Years of wear and tear from standing on a constantly moving platform and from lifting and moving heavy traps and cars eventually leave most lobster fishermen with aches, pains, and joints that need replacing. Vinalhaven fisherman Walter Day, 64, spoke for many when he said, “Constant pain wears you down; it wears you down terribly.”

Fisherman after fisherman interviewed said that, when they were young and strong, they never considered their body’s position in relation to the weight they were handling. Rockport, Mass., fisherman Bob Morris, 57, spoke for just about all when he recalled, “I just let fly because I was a testosterone-loaded kid who thought he was tougher than the world.” Although Morris was quick to say that not all fishermen fall victim to the rigors of work at sea, he said, “I have watched friends get to the point where they crawl out of a skiff at the end of a day or slowly climb over the rocks to get back up on the wharf.”

Point Judith, R.I., fisherman Peter Brodeur, 68, agreed, saying, “As they get older, you can tell the guys who have been on the boats the longest. It’s like a bunch of cripples walking down the block. You use your body like a tool, and just like any tool, it will wear out.”

Brodeur mentioned wear and tear to knees and hips from moving platforms, to backs from bending over from the waist trying to pull on things, to shoulders from repetitive action, and to wrists from banding lobster. He said a doctor once told him the banding tool is one of the worst tools ever designed, and that damage results from the action of closing the tool and from twisting the hand when pulling it off the lobster’s claw. Fishermen have a term for the pain from using the banding tool—Bander’s Cramp.

Day has had five hernia operations to correct damage from years of lifting traps and has trouble with his lower back from the repetitious action of pulling traps over the rail. Although his chiropractor has suggested rigging the boat on both sides so Day could haul on one side one day and on the other side the next, Day doesn’t think that would work, so when his back gets stiff and before real pain sets in, he takes the ferry to the mainland for a chiropractic adjustment.

For six years, Cutler fisherman John Drouin, 50, suffered constant pain from basal joint arthritis in his thumb due to overuse of the joint. This past December, Drouin had complex surgery to remove the offending bone and replace it with a tendon graft. Ten weeks later, he was still recovering.

Drouin has also had three surgeries for plantar fasciitis on each of his sore, aching feet and said the surgeries have helped tremendously. He thinks his foot problem could have developed from standing all day long.

He credits pain-free hips and knees to fishing in a good boat and advised, “A boat that rolls a lot or pounds when going over the seas will really be hard on the hips and knees.”

Drouin blames his lower back problems on years of lifting heavy traps and said he is trying to teach his sons that, if they work together, the job will get done more quickly and with less effort.

Morris said most fishermen, when they hit their 50s, find themselves with at least one heart stent. He and Scituate, Mass., fisherman Fred Dauphinee, 73, have both had multiple heart surgeries and have stents.

Miranda J. Rogers, a medical student at Tufts University, in Boston, mentioned as a cause of heart problems, among other contributing factors, lack of exercise. Morris agrees and said he was taught in cardiovascular rehab that fishermen get stamina exercise—building strong muscles and working for long periods—but not enough or any valuable cardiovascular exercise. To strengthen his heart, Morris said that, along with a healthy diet, he must walk and raise his heart rate for no less than 30 minutes three times a week. He does not remember any of the fishermen with stents that he knows ever walking or getting any cardio exercise.

Lack of sleep hurts fishermen’s health, too. “The way we have evolved in the Canadian lobster fishery,” said Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, fisherman Ashton Spinney, 71, “the technology and the equipment that has come into being is light years ahead of where it was when I started.” (Spinney has a big, wide boat, the stability of which he compares to riding in a Cadillac.) But along with the technology has come a big change in the industry: that of fishermen spending what Spinney calls an astronomical amount of hours on the water. Instead of going out at dawn and returning that afternoon as Canadian lobstermen used to do, he said, “It’s nothing for them to stay out two or three days.”

If fishermen are on the water for that amount of time, Spinney said, they’re only going to be able to sleep X number of hours. This means they have to have others aboard to take the wheel and give those fishermen down time. (A year ago, a Southwest Nova Scotia Lobster Fishing Area (LFA) 34 captain bragged that his crew had been ashore only seven hours during the entire month of December.) Fishermen were starting to have accidents from getting overtired. Spinney said, “They were falling asleep at the wheel. They were just pushing too hard.” The Canadian government now requires that if a fisherman is out a certain number of hours, he must have a qualified person onboard to take over.

Every fisherman interviewed suggested hiring other fishermen to help spread out the work. “Many hands make the workload lighter,” said Drouin. “To me, that is key. Doing this job with help will minimize work-related injuries.”

The main risks associated with developing injuries from two-handed lifting, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health [NIOSH] include bending, twisting, and repetitive motions such as frequent reaching and carrying. Other risks include leaning against hard surfaces or those with sharp edges, maintaining fixed positions for a long time, and lifting more than 50 pounds at a time over a period of eight hours.

Other suggestions from the fishermen interviewed include:

• Before strenuous activity, warm up: Do some slow stretches and move about. “When you don’t warm up,” Morris said he learned in heart rehab, muscles fragment and fray in minute amounts, adding up in time to cumulative damage.

• Carry traps parallel, not at 90 degrees, to your body. Carrying traps the wrong way puts the fulcrum on your lower back.

• Set up hauling stations so you do not reach too far outboard and you don’t have to jerk in an unnatural position with every trap.

• If your knee hits the rail and grinds every time a trap comes over it, mount a padded section to that section of the rail. Near the hauling station some fishermen fiberglass a step into the chine of the boat.

• Consider using spinners; they will remove all twisted gangions, making hauling much easier.

• Instead of charging at jobs that propose difficulty, consider building a tool that might help make the work easier.

• Wear sunglasses when it’s bright out. Sunburnt eyes speed up eye failure.

• Keep hands as warm and dry as possible.