A new investigation report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) stressed the continuing safety risks in the country’s fishing industry as it revealed information about an incident in Placentia Bay, N.L., in which three people died last year.
A small fishing vessel, CFV 130214, disappeared and was reported overdue at 7:23 p.m. on June 16, 2015, and a search-and-rescue team found the bodies of the boat’s crab-fishing crew members on Bar Haven Island the following day. The boat, believed to have sunk, has never been recovered.
Published on Aug. 2, the report could not make any firm conclusions about the cause of the tragedy, due to the lack of witnesses and survivors. But the TSB investigation did find that the master of the crew had modified a 7.1-metre vessel for crab fishing while his main boat had been out of commission. The fisher did not test the modified boat for stability, and investigators speculated that added weight from the modifications, crew members and fishing equipment had made the vessel more vulnerable to capsizing.
The master was required to request an exemption from the Fisheries Licensing Policy to lease another proper crab-fishing boat, but did not do so. Because there were only a few weeks left in the crab-fishing season and the master had not fulfilled his quota, he was under pressure to get results right away, the TSB claimed.
Additionally, the fishers did not have a distress communication device aboard the boat with them. Such a device was not mandatory, but has been known to save lives in the past, the report stated. The bodies of the victims were not wearing personal flotation devices (PFD) when they were discovered, the TSB also revealed.
“The safety of fishermen will be compromised until the complex relationship and interdependency among safety issues is recognized and addressed by the fishing community,” the report concluded, while highlighting communication equipment, PFDs and the lack of information about fisheries licencing as important issues in fishing safety.
Loss of life in the Canadian fishing sector has been on the TSB’s Watchlist since 2014. The report noted that there had been 31 commercial fishing fatalities in Newfoundland and Labrador between 2000 and 2015, with 189 across Canada during the same period.
“As this occurrence demonstrates, the number of accidents involving loss of life on fishing vessels remains too high,” the report read. “Although regulations have been proposed to address several of the safety deficiencies, there have been significant delays in the implementation of some of these initiatives.
“Concerted and coordinated action is required by federal and provincial authorities and by leaders in the fishing community to improve the safety culture in fishing operations.”