More than 60 fatalities in commercial fishing industry

As one of the deadliest industries in the country, the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has made a number of recommendations to improve the safety of workers in the commercial fishing industry.

Since 1992 the TSB has made 48 recommendations to address safety concerns in the industry. According to the 2017 TSB watchlist, 24 investigations have been conducted by the organization since 2011.

During those six years, there were 63 fishing fatalities, with an average of about nine per year.

These fatalities resulted from 47 fishing vessel accidents.

According to the report, 43 per cent of the fatalities were due to falling overboard and 35 per cent were due to vessel-stability related issues.

In about 44 per cent of the fatal incidents, no emergency signal was received by authorities. “We’ve made a number of recommendations for a number of years. Things are progressing, but there is still more we’d like to see done,” said Murray.

These actions include co-ordinating regulatory oversight of commercial fisheries to deal with any gaps in requirements, publish user-friendly guidelines on vessel stability, aim to reduce unsafe practices, ensure fish harvesters are aware of new stability guidelines and have flotation devices, immersion suits, emergency signalling devices and safe work practices. The most recent Senate committee report has touched on vessel stability guidelines becoming accessible on vessels.

The Transportation Safety Board is an independent agency that investigates marine, pipeline, railway and aviation transportation occurrences.