BOSTON — August 22, 2012 — 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” featuring Alaskan crab fishermen, the most dangerous fishery is in the northeast U.S. From 2000-2009, workers in the Northeast multi-species groundfish fishery (including 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 70 percent of those deaths and those in the second-deadliest fishery, Atlantic scallops, followed vessel disasters such as fire, capsizing or sinking. Most of the rest were caused by onboard injuries or falling overboard, often by getting tangled in heavy overhead equipment.
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 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.
“If there’s a resentment to these kinds of rules,” Amaru says as he moors his boat in the harbor. “It’s based on the overall huge number of regulations that have come down on our industry in the last decade.”
“So much federal ‘nanny state’ kind of telling us how to operate, when I think I have a pretty good understanding of what I need to do to keep safe,” Amaru says.
A tragic incident turned Fred Mattera into a safety evangelist. Earlier this month, he helped the crews of two boats organize disaster and man overboard training.
In one exercise, crew members have clumsily put on bright orange-red survival suits. Insulated, watertight and buoyant, the immersion suit covers each fisherman from head to toe; only their faces are exposed. They step off the boat into the calm dockside water. But even in these conditions, wearing a “Gumby suit” feels claustrophic to some and they thrash around until they get their bearings.
“Get your panic out now!” Fred Mattera shouts from the deck. These guys are practicing abandoning ship in the case of a fire or capsizing. The immersion suits are designed to keep them alive and afloat in the icy Atlantic until someone can rescue them.
Mattera coaches them to link up with each other back-to-back and to paddle together over to a life raft to climb in.
When it’s all over, they look winded.
“There’s a ‘holy crap!’ issue to it,” boat captain Norbert Stamps says of the fair-weather training. “You jump in. You kind of realize that this isn’t fun and games, this is real serious stuff! And you gotta practice and you gotta know what to expect.”
Crew member Mike Gallagher says such fishermen-organized trainings are becoming more common.
Listen to the story at NPR affiliate WBUR.