Coast Guard Encouraging Life Jacket Use By Fishermen

by Laurie Schreiber

ROCKPORT—Commercial fishing is the least regulated commercial vessel industry in the nation. The U.S. Coast Guard wants to figure out how to better serve the industry.

That was the word from U.S. Coast Guard Commander Jason boyer, chief of prevention in Sector Northern New England, who spoke at the Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s annual meeting, held March 6 at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum.

“The commercial fishing industry has our attention,” Boyer said. “Unfortunately this year, just in our sector, we’ve had three tragedies. And we’re early in the year.”

Boyer said the agency is figuring out what more it can do to help fishermen.

“A lot of that is culture change,” he said.

The sector, covering New Hampshire to Canada, has three full-time vessel examiners and was soon to hire another, he said.

Covering the many remote communities along the Maine coast is difficult, he said.

“We’re taking a hard look this year to figure out how to create a relationship with you guys, so that you feel comfortable calling us,” he said.

Boyer said a goal is to change the culture of not wearing life jackets, so that every time fishermen leave the dock, they make a conscious decision to put a life jacket on.

“This is a dangerous fishery,” he said. “The weather up here is bad and you guys are fishing year-round. We want to make sure you have all the tools to use the safety gear that’s here.”

Boyer said he’s started to work with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association to reach more fishermen, as well as their partners and children. Contact with children was key in getting adults in Alaska to adopt lifejackets, he said.

“In Alaskan villages, we couldn’t change the adult minds,” he said. “So we went to the schools” and handed contracts to children to take home and get their fishermen parents to sign. The contract said, “I’ll do everything I can to come home.”

“That’ s pulling on some heartstrings up there,” he said. “Our job is to makes sure that if that bad day comes, we give you the best opportunity to come back in.”

Boyer noted that commercial fishing vessels receive sparse attention from regulators.

“As soon as there’s a passenger vessel tragedy, it spins the entire country up and we get calls to figure out how to fix it,” he said. “Fishing vessel casualties don’t get the national coverage and there’s been no real changes in fishing vessel regulations in quite some time.”

For example, he said, fishing vessels are the only commercial vessels that can be changed without oversight of the Coast Guard.

“Nobody comes down to look to see how you’re mounting things and how much you’ve changed your stability,” he said.

Drug and alcohol testing, and licensing and watch requirements could also use scrutiny, he said.

“Every investigation we do has fatigue involved,” he said.

Boat captains and vessel owners have to execute their responsibility to make sure crewmen return home safely, he said.

There are certain types of life jackets that can be comfortably worn, he noted. He displayed a life jacket that was essentially two wide inflatable straps and a belt cinch.

“Either wear them or put them somewhere accessible,” he said. “Do something different that makes it easier for yout to get to them if you still don’t want to wear them.”

The majority of commercial fishermen don’t wear life jackets and wearing one is not required by federal law, according to a handout from Brian LeFebvre, the federal captain of the Port for Maine and sector commander of Coast Guard Sector Northern New England based in South Portland.

“Not wearing a life jacket while fishing is the equivalent of driving down the most dangerous road in Maine, at high speed, with your seatbelt in the trunk of your car,” LeFebvre wrote.

Over the course of eight days in January, Maine lost three fishermen. David Downes died after falling overboard from the Tara Lynn II and drowned just feet from the vessel’s mooring in Portland. Fifty miles offshore, Joe Nickerson and Christopher Pinkham drowned when their vessel, the Hayley Ann, sank and both men were thrown into near freezing seas.

“In Downes’ case, sudden immersion in 42-degree waster was insurmountable despite rescue attempts by his captain and a nearby Coast Guard crew in the minutes immediately following his fall overboard,” LeFebvre wrote. “He was positioned to be easily rescued, yet the sudden and severe impacts of cold water immersion were too much.”

He continued, “The physiological impacts of cold water shock make breathing uncontrollable, which induces swallowing water and causes drowning. Wearing a life jacket greatly reduces this reaction because buoyancy from the jacket keeps a person’s head higher in relation to the water, thus facilitating more controlled breathing and minimizing the amount of water a person swallows.”

Nickerson and Pinkham were unable to make it their life raft, which was still tethered to the Hayley Ann when the Coast Guard arrived, he wrote.

“Had they been wearing life jackets, they may have had a chance. Without them, survival was impossible,” he wrote.

Other important pieces of gear, said Boyer, are an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon or EPIRB, and an engine kill switch.