smoke gushed and a large explosion ensued. Captain and mate abandoned ship and were retrieved from the water by another fishing vessel. The Capt. Adam sank in 48 feet of water.
   On June 30, 2003, heavy rain and strong winds pounded the New Orleans area ahead of Tropical Storm Bill. The F/V Saint Joseph, its pumps unable to keep up with flooding, began sinking with four persons onboard, as winds increased to 50 knots and waves kicked up to 20 feet. Despite perilous conditions, a Coast Guard diver was able to get to the crewmen and connect them to a hovering helicopter.
   In a devastating three-week period beginning Dec. 28, 1998, four clam and conch fishing vessels were lost and 11 fishermen died along the East Coast. The F/V Predator, fully loaded with 113 conch pots stowed aft, each weighing 40 pounds, sank off Maryland, leaving one dead and one survivor. On Jan. 6, 1999, the F/V Beth Dee Bob from Point Pleasant, N.J., dredging for quahogs, went down, losing all four lives. Two days later, three survived and two died when the F/V Cape Fear, overloaded with 130 cages of clams and operating with less than 18 inches of freeboard, took two hard waves or rolls and sank. On Jan. 18, the F/V Adriatic sank off New Jersey, losing four lives.

If the fishing is lucrative, people invest in their boats and in safety, but if things aren't doing well and profits are small, sometimes you cut corners on safety equipment. Photo Alaska Marine Safety Education Association

Human Error, Equipment Failure
   According to John McMillan, president of Belfast-based McMillan Offshore Survival Training, which offers safety and survival training globally, the common characteristic of fishing industry accidents worldwide is human error — lack of response or decision-making capability and poor crew training in situations such as flooding, fires and man overboard.
   Human error is rampant, according to investigation reports.
   On the Arctic Rose, open doorways led to downflooding. Safety training was minimal; shifts of heavy equipment had affected vessel stability.
   On the Predator, all hands were unprepared. The captain’s radio was not on a distress frequency. Immersion suits were inaccessible. The life raft and EPIRB, which wasn’t correctly registered anyway, wouldn’t release.
   The Cape Fear was overladen and a hatch cover was open, taking in water. Emergency drills were minimal. Survival suit zippers stuck.
   “Mayday” from the Adriatic was garbled. The main sea suction valve was broken and couldn’t be closed. The EPIRB didn’t deploy.
   The Capt. Adam was in excellent shape but the generator malfunctioned; overheating ignited wooden decking and a can of ether, which ignited the fuel tanks.
   The Coast Guard scrutinizes each piece of an incident to glean lessons in the form of safety alerts.
   “There are so many factors involved with marine casualties,” said Arn Hegger, a past Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety coordinator for the U.S. Coast Guard. “You can’t say there’s a common thread. But if you remove one of the dominoes, you might be able to prevent an accident. That’s why we push Vessel Dockside Exams. Fishermen are very professional, but they do have unsafe working practices, such as fishing alone. Or lobstermen, not having a rope locker or a fair lead, which would prevent entanglement. Running a winch by themselves without automatic stops. This increases the risk of an accident. When you’re dealing with hydraulic equipment with tons of pressure, things happen quickly and it’s usually fatal.”
   For decades, the majority of fishing vessels have fallen into the category of “uninspected vessels,” with relatively minimal safety requirements imposed on their operators, operations, and maintenance. Domestic vessels are not subject to any standards in many areas of safety, and minimal standards in other areas. And minimal standards were lower than other classes of domestic commercial vessels, and substandard by international norms.
   Marine Safety Office Portland commander Stephen Garrity told this year’s symposium of International Association for Safety and Survival Training (IASST) that the CG is now trying to return resources back to vessel safety initiatives.
   The symposium, held in Castine early in October and coordinated by McMillan, drew about a hundred experts from around the world. Founded in 1980 by a group of safety training providers, IASST’s aim is to enhance the quality of emergency response training by encouraging an interchange of knowledge and experience on a global basis.
   “Fishermen in general — very few have received formalized safety training,” said McMillan. “In-water survival, operating a liferaft and emergency equipment — a lot of guys here can’t even swim; they’re petrified to go into the water because it’s so cold.”
   “A lot of guys don’t maintain their boats the way they should,” McMillan said. “They don’t have the necessary equipment.”

Perilous Profession
   Fishing ranks among the most hazardous professions in the world, outranking other high-casualty industries such as timber cutting and logging, firefighting and law enforcement, and professional motor vehicle operators. The list of casualties, injuries, sinkings, and rescues goes on. Nationwide, more than 100,000 vessels operate; from 1994 to 2003, 1,174 vessels and 601 lives were lost.
   By 2001, the rash of injuries and deaths in Maine alone made safety the No. 1 concern for then-Governor Angus King. Between December 1999 and January 2001, there were more than 90 commercial fishing vessel accidents reported to the Coast Guard in Maine. Ten fishermen died, seven were seriously injured, and 11 vessels were lost.
   King set up a task force to study the problem. Resulting from the task force’s work is the newly-formed Commercial Fishing Safety Council, a standing committee under the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), which met for the first time Sept. 28. (The next meeting will be on Monday, Nov. 29, 5 p.m., at the Department of Human Services in Augusta.) The council plans to send recommendations to DMR Commissioner George Lapointe by November, 2005.
   The council’s aim is to establish a higher level of safety. Currently, state-registered vessels are not required to meet the same safety requirements as similar-sized federally documented vessels that fish in the same area. Federal regulations, addressing equipment, drills and training, make distinctions based on vessel length, registration, distance offshore, inside versus outside the boundary line, cold water versus warm water, and number of people onboard, and they provide greater protection for federally documented boats by requiring equipment that provides a higher level of equipment. For example, neither state nor federal law requires state-registered vessels to have VHF radio, high water alarm, or immersion suits for vessels fishing in some areas.
   “While the extent and effect of fisheries management measures put in place around the world vary widely, they tend to be more concerned with the long-term conservation and sustainable use of fisheries resources than with the welfare of those who harvest them,” wrote Gudrun Petursdottir and Olafur Hannibalsson, fisheries experts in Iceland, in their report to the FAO.
   Maine’s concern extends worldwide. The Fishery Industries Division of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization has been studying the political, social, economic and technological changes affecting the industry for half a century.
   Compounding the issue of maritime safety is the growing specter of terrorism. Since Sept. 11, maritime security has become a priority.
   Before Sept. 11, said Garrity, his department was primarily reactive, concerned with safety training and rescues.
   Rescue at one time took up about 15 percent of the CG’s resources, said Garrity, who called maritime safety “a noble mission.” Homeland security was at two percent; now it takes up 28 percent of the agency’s resources.

When you’re dealing with hydraulic equipment with tons of pressure, things happen quickly and it’s usually fatal. Photo Earl Dotter, www.earldotter.com

Is Catastrophe Preventable?
   Despite the long list of accidents and fatalities at sea, the U.S. Coast Guard maintains that many casualties are probably preventable.
   But even the best preparation remains subject to human judgement in a treacherous environment.
   And there’s a cultural impasse.
   “We’ve been really concerned for a number of years about the rate of injuries and fatalities, especially in certain fishing operations, which can see eight to ten fatalities per year,” said Major John Fetterman of the Maine Marine Patrol. “No other industry would stand for that rate.”
   Safety tends to rise and fall with industry economics, said Fetterman.
   “If the fishing is lucrative, people invest in their boats and in safety,” Fetterman said. “But if things aren’t doing well and profits are small, sometimes you cut corners on safety equipment.”
   The state council, at the moment, is “doing triage,” Fetterman said — looking at what can be done first that would make the most impact, reviewing existing safety programs and looking at areas where safety training can fit in. The lobster industry’s apprentice program is one such area, Fetterman said.
   “We’re talking about changing a culture,” Fetterman said. “When I was growing up, I had a ‘68 Mustang and I didn’t wear a seatbelt and neither did my friends. Now everyone wears seatbelts. We’re looking at completely changing a culture of safety, so that people don’t think about whether they should put a life jacket on — they just put it on.”
   Since 1970, there have been several attempts to adopt safety regulations, usually following a spate of serious casualties.
   Only a fraction of the industry takes advantage of the CG’s free dockside exam. Still, recent initiatives have yielded some success. Statistics reveal a decrease in fatalities and vessels lost in the past five years. In 1999, 145 vessels were lost and there were 86 deaths; in 2003 — 70 vessels lost, 43 dead.
   In 1971, a voluntary program was created, which is still in effect. A turning point came with the creation of the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act (CFIVSA) in 1988, following a series of accidents in the Bering Sea. The CFIVSA requires life-saving and firefighting equipment on all fishing vessels, immersion suits and EPIRBs on vessels operating in certain waters, and special requirements for fish-processing vessels.
   But 12 years later, the Coast Guard’s Fishing Vessel Casualty Task Force concluded current regulations and voluntary compliance standards have only a limited capability to reduce the death rate.
   The report notes there is a cultural barrier to better standards. Proposed laws have not been enacted. Federal safety initiatives have been dampened by tradeoffs with other programs, overriding policies, and legal limits.
   And, notably, many fishermen oppose standards that might save their own lives.
   “Many fishermen accept that fishing is dangerous, and lives are often lost,” the report says. “Many of those harvesting the bounty of our ocean frontier staunchly defend the independent nature of their profession, and vehemently oppose outside interference. The paradox is that fishermen attending a state legislative forum petition for a memorial to lost fishermen in one session, and at another session oppose requirements for basic survival and emergency communications equipment.”