Safety

KODIAK, Alaska — August 17, 2012 — A 58-foot fishing vessel is adrift 150 miles southwest of Unalaska and waiting for a tow.

KMXT reports the Kodiak-based Afognak Straight lost its steering either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

It went aground on Herbert Island but then floated free when the tide shifted.

Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley says the ship is about 10 miles from the island, waiting for the tug Double Eagle to arrive Thursday afternoon and tow it to Dutch Harbor.

 

Read the full story from the AP at the Sacramento Bee.

 

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) July 27, 2012  — The nation's most dangerous job, fishing for Alaskan king crab, has not only gotten safer but it's gotten more profitable, too.

Commercial fishing has long topped the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list of jobs with the most fatalities — and crabbing in the Alaskan waters is by far the most lethal form of fishing.

Thanks to new government rules, there has been only one death in the Alaskan crab fishery in the past six years — a significant improvement from the 1990s which saw an average of 7.3 deaths a year, according to Edward Poulsen, director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

The industry, which was made famous by the Discovery show "Deadliest Catch," no longer engages in "fishing derbies" where fishermen rush to fill their quotas in a few scant days.

"The gun went off and everyone scrambled," Poulsen said. "Some boats loaded too many crab pots and capsized. Others pushed their crews to work too long."

During the derbies, some boats could pull in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crab — half their annual wage — in a few days, while latecomers could come out with nothing. Everyone fished as fast as they could until the quota for the entire fleet was reached.

Most crabbing takes place in the unforgiving Bering Sea. Ice can coat boat decks, 700-pound cages being winched aboard can lurch and sweep workers overboard. Even in a survival suit, designed to provide insulation from cold water, death can come before help arrives. About 80% of crab fishery fatalities are from drowning.

But in 2006, a new catch-share (also called a quota-share) system was put in place by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and the State of Alaska, which co-manage the fishery.

 

Read the full story on CNN News

 

 

GLOUCESTER, Mass., July 23, 2012 — After receiving a distress call from the fishing vessel Grim Reaper, four miles off Gloucester’s Dog Bar Breakwater, a crew from the U.S Coast Guard Station Gloucester towed the boat back into the harbor Sunday.

At 3:19 p.m. the F/V Grim Reaper called Station Gloucester and said its engine had given out and it was taking on water because of the waves.

Gloucester police and the Rockport harbormaster heard the fishing boat’s call and responded with the Coast Guard.

Station Gloucester’s 40-foot lifeboat arrived first, and hooked up the fishing vessel for a tow, with Gloucester police riding alongside. According to the police report, the boat’s engine had flooded, stranding it four miles outside of the harbor in relatively heavy seas.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.

 

 

June 27, 2012 — A pilot spent Friday afternoon spotting tuna for a fishing boat off the coast of Gloucester.

But as he headed home, the engine of his small red plane sputtered and stopped, 12 miles from shore.

The pilot radioed the fishing vessel Christina, for which he was spotting. He said he was going down and going to ditch the plane, 5:15 p.m. Friday.

The vessel, part of National Geographic's "Wicked Tuna" series steamed toward the pilot's location, contacted the Coast Guard, and a Coast Guard lifeboat sped toward the plane as well.

Monday, Jeff Quinn, Boatswain Second Class with the U.S. Coast Guard at Station Gloucester, said that calm weather, a flight plan and a life raft brought him home without a scratch.

"He wasn't even wet," Quinn, who captained the life boat, said of the pilot whose plane went down off Gloucester's shores. "I was relieved when I saw the life raft and the plane. He was waving when we got out there."

Station Gloucester declined to release pilot's name Monday.

The plane came down in 70 degree weather, said Quinn, adding that, more than crashing, the pilot came down and landed on the water, skipping about three times before the plane's life raft inflated.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times  

 

 

June 26, 2012 — The 10th plaque of the Cenotaph of the Gloucester Fishermen's Memorial — a exhaustively researched and assembled narrative of the toll taken from this city by the sea — has been removed, as residents of and visitors to the nation's first fishing port are discovering in this week of the St. Peter's Fiesta.

When the plaque is returned to its place on a granite base, there will be five more names speaking in perpetuity to the precarious ways of the fishing life and the whims of the sea, and once the plaque is back, the cenotaph — a memorial to the dead whose remains are elsewhere — will cite 5,384 names of who went "down to the sea in ships."

The new names — John Orlando, Matteo Russo, Jaime Ortiz, Peter Prybot and Duane "Charlie" Rine — will be read with sadness, made more intense by different degrees of the knowledge of overlapping circles of locals.

Russo, 36, captain of the Patriot, and Orlando, 59, his father-in-law and first and only mate, were lost with their trawler on nearby Middle Bank in a catastrophic event in early January 2009.

The Coast Guard discounted a call from Russo's pregnant wife, who was also his business partner, about a fire alarm call to the service contractor, and failed to launch search-and-rescue efforts for nearly three hours. The Coast Guard admitted its shame in its review and before Congress.

Ortiz, a 43-year-old Honduran immigrant who could not swim nor speak much English but came to Gloucester to work on the stern of a lobster boat to earn money for his family in New York and back in Central America, slipped and fell into the water just outside the Dog Bar breakwater in October 2009.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times  

June 24, 2012 – The fishing stars of reality television show “Wicked Tuna” sprung into action Friday to rescue a pilot who crashed his aircraft just as he was returning from a trip as a spot plane in their hunt for tuna.

The aviator, affectionately known to the crew as “Pat the Pilot,” was uninjured after the crash about 12 nautical miles east of Gloucester, said the U.S. Coast Guard and a crew member for the Gloucester-based fishing boat Christina. The boat is featured on the National Geographic show profiling local tuna fishermen.

“He called me and said ‘I’m going down’ — words I never want to hear again,” said Christina deck boss Greg Chorebanian, who made a panicked scramble to calculate the crash site based on the radio call as the Coast Guard launched a helicopter, Falcon jet and motor lifeboat.

As the Christina sped to the crash, the jet located the pilot in a life raft attached to the tail of the plane, the Coast Guard said.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald.

 

 

June 13, 2012 — PORTLAND, Maine — U.S. Coast Guard crews from Maine rescued a stranded Maine-based fishing vessel Monday after it had broken down 110 miles east of Gloucester Harbor.

The Coast Guard Cutter Moray successfully towed the fishing vessel Prudence back to Portland after receiving a distress call from the boat Sunday. The vessel was reportedly adrift off Gloucester with four people aboard.

Coast Guard officials said the Prudence had all the necessary safety equipment on board, and had taken precautions that assisted with the Coast Guard response.

"The Prudence had all the necessary safety equipment, and a satellite phone," said Petty Officer 1st Class Josh A. Morales, a search and rescue watchstander at the First Coast Guard District's command center in Boston. "They also told a family member where they were going, so we had a point of contact to help us find them."

 

Read the full story on The Gloucester Times

June 11, 2012 – U.S. Coast Guard crews from Maine have rescued a stranded fishing vessel.

The Coast Guard Cutter Moray successfully towed the vessel back to Portland on Monday.

The Coast Guard received a distress call on Sunday afternoon from the fishing vessel Prudence with four people aboard. The boat was adrift about 110 miles east of Gloucester, Mass.

Coast Guard officials said the Prudence had all the necessary safety equipment and a satellite phone, plus crewmembers told a family member where they were going.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe.

 

 

June 4, 2012 — Paper cuts are the worst. That is, until you put things in perspective and realize that for many of us, our jobs require very little actual physical danger. From the relatively exotic to the seemingly mundane, certain occupations carry an underlying danger that can reach up to 116 fatalities per 100,000 workers.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent figures, there were 4,547 fatal occupational injuries in 2010, or four fewer than reported in 2009. The majority of these injuries occur in a handful of sectors representing the most dangerous ways to earn a living in the country.

But for the rest of us, we all know that getting a paper cut right where your finger bends is still pretty terrible.

Job: Fishing

Risk factors: The producers of "Deadliest Catch" don't need to create much artificial drama, as fishers and fishing workers have — on average — the most dangerous jobs in the country. Malfunctioning gear, inclement weather and transportation incidents all factor into the fact that this profession has the country's highest fatality rate, a distinction it has held since 1992.

Fatality rate: 116 per 100,000 workers; 29 total

Average annual salary: $25,590

 

Read the full story on Yahoo Finance 

 June 5, 2012 — A Coast Guard helicopter from Air Station Cape Cod responded to a call for help from a New Bedford fishing vessel today and rescued a crewman who was complaining of chest pains.

The 78-foot groundfishing vessel Hustler, formerly called the Seel, radioed the Coast Guard around 3:30 a.m. this morning. The Coast Guard responded immediately by sending a Jayhawk helicopter to rendezvous with the fishing vessel which was located approximately 17 miles east of Nantucket.

The crewman was airlifted from the vessel's stern and transported to Cape Cod hospital in Barnstable. The Coast Guard did not release the name of the crewman, saying only that he was 53 years old.

“Coast helicopters crews are trained to respond in an array of weather conditions to mariners in distress,” said Lt. Scott Koser, an Air Station Cape Cod public affairs officer. “In this case we worked closely with medical services to coordinate a successful operation,” he said in a press release.

 

Read the full story on South Coast Today