Safety

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — February 18, 2014 — The Salvadoran fisherman who says he drifted at sea for more than a year left a hospital Tuesday after treatment for the psychological and physical effects of his ordeal, and told reporters he survived because of his faith in God.

Jose Salvador Alvarenga, 37, appeared strong and walked without help, but also seemed disoriented and had trouble speaking.

Alvarenga said he didn’t plan to tell his story and didn’t want to remember the ordeal.

‘‘I always had faith that I was going to survive, asking (God) every day and every night,’’ he said. ‘‘I never lost faith that one day I would be found.’’

Asked about the fate of his fishing companion, Ezequiel Cordova, 22, Alvarenga said Cordova lived four months in the boat before succumbing to starvation and exposure. Alvarenga has said that he lived on fish, turtles and birds and that Cordova had difficulty eating raw food.

Reporters asked if Alvarenga had eaten Cordova to survive, and he answered with an emphatic ‘‘No.’’

‘‘He died of starvation and the sun,’’ Alvarenga added.

He said Cordova’s parents shouldn’t worry for their son because he died praying to God: ‘‘The whole time he was asking for forgiveness.’’

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

February 13, 2014 — Lobstermen say a young man who was pulled overboard and down into the dangerously cold ocean Wednesday when his foot got caught in a lobster trap line is lucky that his crew mates reacted quickly and knew exactly what to do.

And they said it’s not uncommon to fall overboard on the job.

“It’s a lot more common than people know,” said David Cousens of Spruce Island, president of the 1,200-member Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “I’ve almost gone over twice in 40 years. I had the rope around my feet both times, and luckily had a sternman who acted quickly and got me undone.”

Cousens began lobstering when he was 10. Now 55, he has heard stories of other close calls, though most lobstermen are reluctant to share them.

“They don’t want to admit it. They’re embarrassed about it,” he said. “The safest thing you can do is make sure you don’t go alone.”

Devin Pesce, 19, of Lisbon Falls remained hospitalized Thursday at Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford, where his condition had improved from serious to fair.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

February 12, 2014 — A fisherman who was pulled overboard and down into the frigid Atlantic by a sinking string of lobster traps Wednesday morning off York County was pulled back on board and successfully given CPR by his crew.

Devin Pesce, 19, of Lisbon Falls was in serious condition at Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford on Wednesday night, a spokeswoman said.

After being on the verge of death, Pesce walked off the boat on his own, said Lucky Oppedisano, who was on the boat along with Pesce’s father, Dan, the owner and captain. Oppedisano called it a blessing.

“When you bring somebody back to life, it makes you think about all the other stuff that’s really not important,” he said.

Dan Pesce could not be reached Wednesday.

Devin Pesce was working on his father’s 42-foot boat, the Kylie Brooke out of Harpswell, pulling and rebaiting traps 15 miles east of Cape Porpoise.

The long line of connected traps, called strings or trawls, was in water 200 to 300 feet deep, where lobsters go in cold weather.

The swells were just 1.3 feet, but it was cold. The water temperature was 38.7 degrees and the air temperature was 14.5 degrees, the Coast Guard said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

 

SAN SALVADOR — February 13, 2014 — A fisherman who says he drifted at sea for more than a year, surviving on raw fish, turtles, and birds, is in stunningly good health but psychologically fragile, medical experts said Wednesday as the man recuperated in a hospital in his native El Salvador.

Jose Salvador Alvarenga underwent a battery of tests after returning home from the Marshall Islands, where he showed up after what he has described as 6,500-mile journey from Mexico across the Pacific that began when his small fishing boat was thrown off course by bad weather.

The medical team that examined him at the San Rafael hospital in the Salvadoran capital said he was in remarkably good physical health: with no skin lesions from overexposure to the sun, and no cardiovascular or kidney issues. His only physical problem, doctors, was a case of anemia.

‘‘All of the exams have been basically close to normal. It’s incredible,’’ said El Salvador’s minister of public health, Maria Isabel Rodriguez.

She and other Salvadoran experts who looked at Alvarenga’s results said they had no doubt about the veracity of his tale, so incredible that it left many skeptical even in the absence of an alternate explanation for his appearance on the Pacific Island atoll.

Read the full story from The Boston Globe

January 28, 2014 — For more than 20 years, NIOSH has been working to prevent accidental deaths in the fishing industry. Now, these safety experts are tackling injuries – the kind fishermen are used to getting every season.

In her time at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Jennifer Lincoln says she’s found a common cause behind the most serious fishing accidents.

“If you ask me what leads to fatalities in the fishing industry, it’s drowning,” Lincoln said. “It’s vessel losses and falls overboard.”

Lincoln directs the Alaska field office for NIOSH.

Their commercial fishing experts have been studying fatal accidents since 1991. Using their research, they’ve come up with a slew of mechanical gadgets – like door monitors and emergency winch stops – to make boats safer.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Alaska Public Media 

 

 

January 21, 2014 — The Fishing Partnership Support Services will hold a series of training workshops throughout Massachuetts this season focused on two types of at sea safety training. The Basic Safety course is a full-day session for commercial fishermen, and the Drill Conductor training is a full day session for those who have completed the Basic course within the past year. Training sessions will be held on select dates between February and June.

Schedule:

February 20 – Basic – New Bedford at UMASS Dartmouth SMAST
February 21 – Drill Conductor – New Bedford at UMASS Dartmouth SMAST
March 6 – Basic – Sandwich at Pilot House / Sandwich Marina
March 7 – Drill Conductor – Sandwich at USCG Station
March 20 – Basic – Boston at UMASS Boston
March 21 – Drill Conductor – Boston at UMASS Boston
April 3 – Basic – Marshfield at Marshfield Yacht Club / Marina
April 4 – Drill Conductor – Marshfield at Marshfield Yacht Club / Marina
April 16 – Basic – Chatham at Old Stage Harbor
April 17 – Drill Conductor – Chatham at Old Stage Harbor
May 15 – Basic – Gloucester at Coast Guard Station
May 16 – Drill Conductor – Gloucester at Coast Guard Station
June 5 – Basic – New Bedford at UMASS Dartmouth SMAST

View a PDF of the announcement for more information 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — January 17, 2014 — A 35-year-old worker died after getting tangled in a shucking machine at a local fishery early Thursday.

Emergency personnel responded to a call for an industrial accident at the Sea Watch International Seafood Co., 15 Antonio Costa Blvd., at about 1:30 a.m., said Detective Captain Steven Vicente.

The New Bedford resident, identified as Victor Gerena, was pronounced dead at the scene, he said.

"The victim was in the process of flushing out a shellfish shucking machine when the accident happened," Vicente said in a email.

Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times

BOSTON — January 14, 2014 — The Coast Guard medically evacuated a fisherman 60 miles east of Chatham, Mass., at approximately 7 a.m., Monday.

At approximately 3:15 a.m. Monday, watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England received a report from the crew of the fishing vessel Bulldog, homeported in New Bedford, Mass., that a 51-year-old crewmember had partially severed a finger while conducting a repair of the vessel and was requesting assistance. The crewmember was reportedly repairing a steering mechanism when he was injured, and the Bulldog was adrift.

A Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Mass., MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew was launched, arrived on scene and safely hoisted the fisherman at 7 a.m.. He was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at approximately 8:45 a.m.

His condition is unknown.

The Bulldog crew was able to complete steering repairs and is currently enroute to New Bedford.

Read the story and watch the video from the US Coast Guard

January 7, 2014 — The Michael & Kristen, a 78-foot offshore lobster boat, arrived back in its home port of Gloucester Monday morning — 11 days after launching a trip to Georges Bank that spanned the new year turnover and exposed the boat and its five-man crew to some very choppy weather.

Winds were 50 to 60 mph, the snowfall was heavy, and there were some monster waves, according to the boat’s captain, Ronald Davis.

“We just rode out the storm,” Davis said, unconcerned. “Seas were 20 to 25 feet.”

The Michael & Kristen traveled to a place on Georges Bank, an elevated area of the sea floor, that was about 180 miles east-southeast of Gloucester. The boat also experienced some icing as it traveled through the Gulf of Maine.

Bad weather is nothing new to Davis, who has been fishing for 30 years and has captained the Michael & Kristen for 10.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

January 2, 2014 — For Montauk as a community, the ocean remains a blessing and a curse. It is the lifeblood of the town, the essence of its economic livelihood, the reason the tourists keep coming back. But it is also a constant threat.

Looking back, John Aldridge knew it was a stupid move. When you’re alone on the deck of a lobster boat in the middle of the night, 40 miles off the tip of Long Island, you don’t take chances. But he had work to do: He needed to start pumping water into the Anna Mary’s holding tanks to chill, so that when he and his partner, Anthony Sosinski, reached their first string of traps a few miles farther south, the water would be cold enough to keep the lobsters alive for the return trip. In order to get to the tanks, he had to open a metal hatch on the deck. And the hatch was covered by two 35-gallon Coleman coolers, giant plastic insulated ice chests that he and Sosinski filled before leaving the dock in Montauk harbor seven hours earlier. The coolers, full, weighed about 200 pounds, and the only way for Aldridge to move them alone was to snag a box hook onto the plastic handle of the bottom one, brace his legs, lean back and pull with all his might.

And then the handle snapped.

Suddenly Aldridge was flying backward, tumbling across the deck toward the back of the boat, which was wide open, just a flat, slick ramp leading straight into the black ocean a few inches below. Aldridge grabbed for the side of the boat as it went past, his fingertips missing it by inches. The water hit him like a slap. He went under, took in a mouthful of Atlantic Ocean and then surfaced, sputtering. He yelled as loud as he could, hoping to wake Sosinski, who was asleep on a bunk below the front deck. But the diesel engine was too loud, and the Anna Mary, on autopilot, moving due south at six and a half knots, was already out of reach, its navigation lights receding into the night. Aldridge shouted once more, panic rising in his throat, and then silence descended. He was alone in the darkness. A single thought gripped his mind: This is how I’m going to die.

Aldridge was 45, a fisherman for almost two decades. Most commercial fishermen in Montauk were born to the work, the sons and sometimes the grandsons of Montauk fishermen. But Aldridge was different — he chose fishing in his mid-20s, moving east on Long Island from the suburban sprawl where he grew up to be closer to something that felt real to him. He found work on a dragger and then on a lobster boat, and then, in 2006, he bought the Anna Mary with Sosinski, his best friend since grade school. Now they had a thriving business, 800 traps sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic, and two times a week they’d take the boat out overnight, spend an 18-hour day hauling in their catch and return the next morning to Montauk loaded down with lobster and crab.

Sosinski had a reputation on the docks as a fun-loving loudmouth, a bit of a clown — he actually rode a unicycle — but Aldridge was the opposite: quiet, intense, determined. Work on the Anna Mary was physically demanding, and Aldridge, who was lean but strong, drew a sense of accomplishment, even pride, in how much he was able to endure each trip — how long he could keep working without sleep, how many heavy traps he pulled out of the water, how quickly and precisely he and Sosinski were able to unload them, restock them with bait and toss them back in. Now, alone in the water, he tried to use that strength to push down the fear that was threatening to overtake him. No negative thoughts, he told himself. Stay positive. Stay strong.

Read the full story at the New York Times