Sea fishing is a risky business and, according to a recent SINTEF report, working alone on small vessels is the riskiest of all. Image: Sintef

Fishers working from small vessels are at the greatest risk

The following is an excerpt from an article published by Sintef:

Friday 1 March another Norwegian fisherman was drowned while working. He became the 156th Norwegian working in the industry to lose his life since the new millennium. A safety researcher at SINTEF says that this only goes to underline the message delivered in a report recently published by her team.

The fisheries sector is a dangerous profession, and fishers working from small vessels are at the greatest risk. They are often alone on board, working on boats measuring between 6 and 11 metres long. In a recent report Personulykker i den norske fiskeflåten (Accidents involving personnel in the Norwegian fishing fleet/in Norwegian), researchers present a review showing that more than half of the 149 fishers who lost their lives in accidents occurring between 2000 and 2022 were working on small vessels.

Safety researcher Ingunn Holmen at SINTEF Ocean has been heading the work behind the report.

 “Sadly, we now have to add yet another fatality to the 155 lost so far since the new millennium”, says Holmen. On Monday 4 March she received news that the fisher who fell overboard the previous Friday had lost his life. 

“Yet another solitary fisher working on a small vessel”, says Holmen. “This fatality serves to underline the seriousness of our message.  When we know why accidents happen, it will be possible to prevent them more effectively, so we must increase our efforts to stop fishers losing their lives at work”, she says.

Holmen believes that the Norwegian parliament’s commitment to a zero vision for deaths and serious injury in the fishing fleet must be followed up.

“Our figures demonstrate that we have a long way to go, and our systematic review has provided useful information”, she says.

Photo: Sintef Project

Holmen also thinks that both vessel owners and those working on fishing boats can make use of this information. She hopes too that other actors, such as special interest groups, the public authorities, insurance companies, educational institutions, the rescue services, technology suppliers and boat builders, will also sit up and take notice.

Drowning is the most common

“When you’re alone on board … if something starts to go wrong, it can go very badly wrong”. So said one of the informants interviewed in connection with the research project called Serious accidents in the coastal fishing fleet – causes and preventive measures. [...]

Author: Guro Kulset Merakerås | Read the full article by clicking the link here

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