Canada’s Transportation Safety Board admits that government and industry are not paying much attention to address persistent fishing vessel safety problems that have been identified by its investigators. According to the information in the past two decades, the TSB has issued 42 recommendations on how to improve marine safety but investigators say they still see the same problems at accident scenes.
TSB chair Wendy Tadros comments that action has been taken, the issues have been recognized in safety, but more needs to be done. He added that on average, 12 fishermen die while working in Canada every year. Those deaths are often traced back to vessel stability, crew training and a lack of immersion suits. Board member Jonathan Seymour uses the 2004 loss of the Ryan’s Commander off northeastern Newfoundland as an example. He told that where you got a vessel which cost [almost] $2 million, but a stability assessment which would have cost about $15,000 wasn’t done.
Nearly 450 marine accidents happen every year. The board said almost half of them involve fishing vessels. TSB investigators found the vessel had stability problems that contributed to the tragedy.
