May 16, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD — J.J. Bartlett, president of Fishing Partnership Support Services, said the most dangerous job in America isn’t firefighting or police work.
It’s commercial fishing, Bartlett claimed Tuesday at the new Fishing Heritage Center downtown. Bartlett said groundfishermen in the northeastern U.S. work in the most dangerous waters in the country — more hazardous than Alaska — and, from 2000 to 2009, were 37 times more likely to die on the job than police officers.
He said that figure came from a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and workforce data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bartlett’s comments came at an event announcing the release of RESCUES — Responding to Emergencies at Sea and Communities Under Extreme Stress — a new safety and resources manual created by Fishing Partnership Support Services, the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and other collaborators.
Madeleine Hall-Arber, an anthropologist with MIT’s Sea Grant College Program, is one of the manual’s authors. The MIT program funded the manual’s printing. Hall-Arber said at the Heritage Center that collaborators’ intent is to distribute the free manual to fishing boats and fishermen’s families across the region.