The Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks commercial fishing as the deadliest job in the United States. And despite the popular notion from reality TV’s Deadliest Catch, which features Alaskan crab fishermen, the most dangerous American fishery is in the Northeast.
From 2000 to 2009, workers in the Northeast’s multi-species groundfish fishery (which includes fish such as cod and haddock) were 37 times more likely to die on the job as a police officer.
A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report shows that 70 percent of those deaths and those in the second-deadliest fishery, Atlantic scallops, followed disasters such as a vessel catching fire, capsizing or sinking. Most of the rest came from onboard injuries or falling overboard often caused by heavy overhead equipment.
Not one of those who fell overboard and drowned was wearing a life jacket.
An investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, NPR News and WBUR in Boston found that despite earning the odious ranking as America’s deadliest job, commercial fishing in the Northeast operates in a cultural tradition and regulatory environment that thwarts promising safety measures.
Despite the strikingly high fatality rate in the fishing industry, pushes for reform have taken decades to come to fruition. In 1988, Congress required fishing boats to carry life boats, personal flotation devices and other safety equipment.
Yet while the Coast Guard mandates seaworthiness inspections of passenger ferries and other commercial vessels, fishing boats are not inspected.
“We’ve … requested authority to do inspections on vessels,” says Jack Kemerer, chief of the fishing vessels division of the Coast Guard. Congress did not include that power in the U.S. Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010.
“So I can’t answer why or why not,” Kemerer says. “But, you know, it’s not that we haven’t asked for it in the past.”
Most fishermen don’t want to be supervised. Some are fatalistic about their life on the seas. New England fishermen used to buy steel-toed boots, believing that if they fell into the frigid Atlantic, it was better to drown faster. Others espouse a rugged individualism and see themselves as the last cowboys on the ocean.
Alaskan waters had been viewed as the most hazardous place for commercial fishing that is, until a closer focus on safety reduced the number of fatalities in those fisheries.
“I believe that fishermen want to be safe,” says National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health epidemiologist Jennifer Lincoln, who’s based in Alaska. “They just want things to be practical. They want the solutions to really address the hazards that exist.”
In Alaska, fishermen, state regulators and the Coast Guard have worked together to make fishing less deadly:
Bering Sea crabbing boats now transport fewer crab pots when they head out to sea. In turn, that weight limit prevented capsizing. Fatalities fell by 60 percent.
Because capsizing often occurred in deaths of Alaska’s salmon fishermen, skiff operators are now allowed the option of leaving immersion suits off their small boats, as long as they wear a life preserver at all times.
Pilot projects with life preservers designed for their working conditions encouraged scallop boats to require crew members to wear them.
2012 NPR