Canadian Occupational Safety

June/July 2015 17 In other fi sheries, such as ground fi sh and long line, stability and the possibility of overloading is a concern throughout the season. "They might go out and come back with a belly full of their catch and that's where stability could be a real concern, especially if the water is getting into the holds, so the boat is taking on water slowly and they don't realize it and it capsizes," says Franck. The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans may be exacerbating the issue because some of its regulations can really impact safety, says McKay. For example, a crew of prawn fi shers may have a 30-foot boat that they can safely carry 100 traps on, but the department gives them a license for 500 traps, she says. "So that's where we input the education and you go, 'Well look, this is what's going to happen if you put those 500 traps on there.'" There are also regulations on the size of the vessel a fi sher can have for his fi shing license, which are old regulations that need to be updated, says McKay. As a result, small boats are out in areas where there should be bigger boats. Fish SAFE offers a stability education program and more than 1,000 fi shers have completed the four- day course to date. The course has contributed to the province's 88 per cent decrease in fi shing fatalities since 2004, says McKay. If a boat is capsizing, fi shers need to know how to safely abandon the ship. The best way to teach them is right on their individual boats, says McKay. "Different vessels may have different equipment, and there may be a different life raft on one boat than another, but you need to be trained on that specifi c equipment on that boat," she says. "And you can take a Marine Emergency Duties program in a classroom, but you will have been trained on the equipment used in the classroom, not the equipment on the boat you are working on." Conducting emergency drills where fi shers need to evacuate their boat is an excellent way to make sure they have the practice they need in the event of an emergency. Fishers also need to know how to don their survival suits. When LeBlanc did an exercise with a couple of his crew members, they took 15 minutes to put on their survival suits — which are quite tricky to don. "I looked at them and said, 'You both drowned,'" says LeBlanc. "By the third time they did it, they were under a minute." When the Poseidon Princess capsized off Yarmouth, N.S., in January, the three fi shermen on board credited their immersion suits with saving their lives. Captain Martin D'Entremont had conveniently attached the survival suits with a bungee cord over the door going out of the wheelhouse. "All the gear was up to snuff, everything was work- ing good and I can't say enough about the immersion suits... For the one I had, it was the ultimate thing to have on in that situation — saved my life. Other than that, I only had shorts on," he told the CBC. EXHAUSTION PREVALENT Worker fatigue is a major problem in the fi shing industry. "It's not easy work. The conditions they're working in, the gear they are working with, a lot of it is heavy and they are out in the elements, which in and of itself would have an impact on you physically, but they can also be gone for very long periods of time," says Allison Himmelman, senior communications advisor at Nova Scotia's WCB. "If they fi sh quite far out, it might take them a day to get to the fi shing ground and then they might be out there for a couple of days before they come back. It's long hours." Fishers typically do not get much sleep or they get uninterrupted sleep. Fisher fatigue has gotten worse over the past few years because of economics in certain fi sheries — some crews are going out with fewer people on board, says McKay. Fish SAFE has developed an education program for anyone navigating the vessel on the effects of fatigue and how to develop procedures around minimizing it. Fatigue reduces decision-making ability, hand- eye co-ordination, visual perception and capacity to judge risk. For example, a veteran halibut fi sherman in B.C. who worked safely and had many safe work practices in place overlooked a safety procedure one evening when it was late, his crew was pulling in their last string and he was exhausted. "They had been working for over 20 hours and he said, 'I saw this and I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I thought I could get away with it,' and he ended up overboard," says McKay. People who are fatigued are unable to gauge their own level of impairment, so it's crucial all crew members are trained on how to look for fatigue in other people, she says. Nova Scotia's Fishing Safety Action Plan is tackling the issue of fatigue and recommending more research be done to truly understand the scale of the problem. The goal is to encourage fi shers to look at their current work practices and get them thinking about how they might work differently to ensure they aren't too tired or worn out to be working safely, says Himmelman. Drugs and alcohol are also a big problem on fi shing vessels. "If you look at all the accidents that happen and you were to identify what was the key item, you would be surprised how often alcohol or drugs were a contributing factor — probably in most of the accidents," says LeBlanc who is also a member of the Safe at Sea Alliance. Some captains have said they will not be able to get a crew if they do not allow drugs and alcohol on board and, in some cases, if they don't provide the drugs and alcohol, says Franck. The Safe at Sea Alliance is working on getting fi shers to understand the boat is their workplace and it is unacceptable to show up at work with drugs and alcohol, says Rowan. "It's just a way of life… but we are seeing a lot of captains running their ships and vessels as a professional workplace and setting the standard," she says. While there has been an element of drinking in fi shing since LeBlanc started in the industry 33 years ago, he still never allowed drugs or alcohol on his boat, and he discusses this issue at every one of his association's general meetings. He believes the best way to handle this is to have the RCMP boarding vessels and doing spot checks — then the issue will "clear up very quickly," he says. KNOWLEDGE SHARING NEEDED One reason for the strong culture of safety in fi shing in B.C. is a focus on mentorship. The west coast has an average of 2.33 deaths per year in the fi shing industry, according to the TSB. Fishers are helping fellow fi shers foster a safety culture, says McKay, who is a third- generation fi sher herself. "When I talk to a fi sherman about stability, he is more likely to listen to me than to some government person or some instructor at an institution that knows the principles but maybe he can see in my face the consequences of not understanding stability," McKay says, whose father and uncle died at sea in 1975 due to capsizing. Fish SAFE's programs are driven by storytelling because that is an important part of the fi shing culture. "Fishermen are big talkers. They like to talk about the last big catch or last big haul, and every fi sherman has a story," McKay says. "I can go down to the boat and we can be talking about man overboard and he will say 'Oh yeah just last summer, remember so and so?' And use that as your platform: 'What happened there? What could have happened? How would you prevent that? What would you do on your boat?'" Sometimes the older fi shers are mentoring the younger ones without really knowing it. For example, LeBlanc was one of the fi rst fi shermen to put on a PFD and he insisted that everyone on his boat wear the device, then slowly, more and more men in his fi shing community started to don PFDs. "When you're a mentor, you've got to be seen as not just promoting safety, but doing safety," he says. Slowly but surely, the fi shing industry is putting a greater emphasis on safety and the tradition of tragedy will hopefully soon come to an end. There are many people in the industry who are quite safety conscious, says Franck, and thousands and thousands of successful fi shing trips are completed safely year after year. "The main difference is fi shermen now believe and they have proved with the proper tools, programs and education that they can come home safely, as compared to when we fi rst started this, there was just that acceptance that the inherent risk in fi shing included loss of life," says McKay. "It was just accepted that you go out, you might come back, you might not." And LeBlanc is seeing positive changes around increased safety awareness within his own fi shing community as well. Although he suffers daily fl ashbacks to the boat explosion in 1985, LeBlanc continues to share his story to ensure no one else has to walk in his shoes. "Every time someone loses a child or someone dies in the ocean, I look up at the sky and say 'One more member that's joined our club,'" he says. "I'm out to prevent someone else from joining my club." MULTI PURPOSE! Chemical burns cause 54.5% of eye injuries … is the unique First Aid treatment eyewash & skin-rinse with: 1. 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