III. Safety training

Effective approaches to safety at sea everywhere in the world and at all levels, rely on three lines of defence:

1. Prevention (the most reliable and cost-effective component): Suitable equipment, training, experience, information and judgement to avoid getting into trouble in the first place.

2. Survival and self-rescue: The equipment, training and attitudes necessary to survive and effect self-rescue when things start to go wrong.

3. Search and Rescue (SAR) (the most costly and least reliable of the three levels): Systems of alert, search, and rescue which are called upon when the first two lines of defence have failed.

The importance of quality training in reducing loss of life through prevention and survival of accidents, as well as in reducing SAR costs, cannot be over-emphasized. The main constraints to the provision of good training are the costs involved and the lack of mandatory requirements. Further, institutions providing safety training are frequently faced with distrust and resistance from the industry, though experience has shown that these can be overcome if the training and the trainers are seen to have specialized relevance and knowledge not only of the safety issues, but also of the fisheries directly relevant to the trainees, of the local community and its particular problems.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION

Even if all relevant international conventions were extended to include fisheries, ratified by sufficient numbers of countries and implemented and enforced in laws and regulations at national levels, a safe working environment could not be ensured without community participation. Measures to improve safety can only be truly effective where the motivation to apply them exists. To establish and maintain such a culture of safety is a never-ending task that demands the participation of the fishermen themselves and their families, the boat-owners, the legislators and the community at large. In many countries, fishermen's self-help groups or other NGOs have established fruitful cooperation with the authorities to promote safety in their communities.

Danger has always been an integral part of the working environment on merchant and fishing vessels, and, it seems, accepted as such. With the rapid expansion of the fleets during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as vessels ventured further into unknown waters, catastrophes involving great numbers of seafarers occurred more often, forcing the public to become aware of the problem. Gradually, this led to organized efforts to remedy the situation: light-houses were erected, maps of coastal waters were improved, harbours were built and organized search and rescue systems were established. Emergency huts manned by members of voluntary coast guards, were erected in strategic places, containing a boat and the equipment necessary to come to the aid of ships in danger.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, safety equipment on board vessels was scant. Even on board an oceanliner like the SS Titanic, life rafts and boats were only provided for a fraction of those on board. The Titanic disaster continues to attract worldwide attention and led to the first international treaty to improve safety at sea, SOLAS. At national levels it also gave weight to the voluntary organizations that had been established in coastal areas, often promoted by the fishermen's wives and mothers and other women in the communities. Their aim was to promote safety culture, raise the necessary funds, and exert pressure on legislators to provide the legal framework for improved safety (see BOX 5).

Such voluntary organizations played a very important role in promoting safety in fisheries communities around the North Atlantic. In recent years, one of their major tasks in many communities has been to prepare and provide systematic safety training courses for fishermen.

RELUCTANCE TO ATTEND SAFETY COURSES

In spite of vigorous, well-organized, and widely promoted activities by course organizers, fishermen's reluctance to attend safety courses is a serious cause of concern.

Fishermen often seem neither aware of, nor willing to admit the risks inherent in their occupation. In addition to plenty of anecdotal evidence, there are scientific studies showing fishermen's disposition toward risk-taking,³⁵ some of which even report that fishermen are more prone to suffer fatal injuries on land than members of other occupations.³⁶ In a Canadian study, the "hierarchy of worries" among offshore fishermen showed that their greatest concerns centred on the depletion of the fishstocks and the potential loss of work, etc. Then came various other worries, and only toward the bottom of the list, if mentioned at all, were worries or fear of injury on the job.³⁷

This attitude, combined with reluctance to spend valuable time ashore training and to accept the potential loss of income while attending safety courses, makes it difficult, if not futile, to offer safety courses for fishermen on a voluntary basis. It is interesting to note how speakers from different parts of the world at the international conference on safety and working conditions aboard fishing vessels, held in Rimouski, Canada in 1989,³⁸ agreed that because of fishermen's disposition, voluntary safety courses would be futile. Only if compelled to do so, would the fishermen attend such courses. Some examples are below.

Box 4. Voluntary safety training inadequate

OBLIGATORY SAFETY TRAINING

Offering courses on a voluntary, irregular "on again - off again" basis demands a lot of marketing effort and reaches comparatively few fishermen. Interest may be temporarily aroused by dramatic incidents, such as major losses of lives at sea, but when their effects wear off, the marketing effort has to be resumed. This sporadic approach is costly in terms of time and money and has limited impact. This has been recognized by most leading nations in safety at sea, which in the last decade have made safety training compulsory for all fishermen entering the profession, with some also including experienced fishermen. These include many countries in Europe as well as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The main elements of the training include: first aid, survival at sea, fire-fighting/smoke diving, and safety on board; hull, machinery and electrical equipment; and stability. In the United States and Canada, the training often includes radio and navigation equipment. The courses vary in length usually from 20 to about 40 hours.

Any mandatory programme is likely to be resented, resisted and probably to fail, unless it has the support and involvement of fishermen. It is important to offer the training in a realistic environment involving the fishermen in "hands-on" participation with active feedback. Therefore the training is either provided on board specially equipped training vessels or in training centres in the fishing communities. In some places, drills can be offered on board the fishermen's own vessels. The need to establish trust between trainees and trainers is recognized and experienced fishermen are appointed as instructors where possible.

Safety training for fishermen has been introduced at various levels with various requirements for the issue of a certificate. Some courses merely require attendance, while more comprehensive programmes require specific tasks to be undertaken by the trainee (e.g. extinguishing a fire or launching and boarding a life raft) and, at the higher levels, they require oral and written examinations to be completed satisfactorily. Many pre-sea safety courses in developed countries are identical, or very similar to courses agreed by international convention for trading vessels by IMO and described in IMO Model courses. These courses are designed to be adapted to various types and size of vessel and a fishing vessel is, in effect, just another vessel. The components of these courses are:

1. Personal survival techniques,
2. Fire prevention and fire fighting,
3. Elementary first aid,
4. Personal safety and social responsibilities.

The certificates from such courses have the added advantage of occupational mobility for the trainee and the rationalization of expensive training resources between the trading and fishing industries. The certificates from such approved basic training also have the added advantage that they are internationally recognized.

As in the more general field of fisheries training, there has been a change of emphasis in recent years to functional training where trainees have to demonstrate their competence to complete tasks, rather than prove their knowledge by providing oral or written answers to questions. This type of functional training requires more resources than theoretical training, particularly where trainees are exposed to dangerous situations, and safety during the safety training process becomes an issue. Under such circumstances, specialized facilities, where simulations of dangerous scenarios can be undertaken, but where a tight degree of control by highly trained, experienced instructors can be exercised are highly desirable. Where such survival training centres and fire training centres are available, they should be utilized fully, even by artisanal fishermen. After all, an artisanal fisherman is going to face the same problems as a fisherman from the biggest vessel in the world in a survival at sea situation.

Despite increased safety legislation, mandatory courses and improved safety equipment, some European countries are concerned that the accident rate and fatality rate remain very high. These countries have looked to the Integrated Safety Management (ISM) system adopted by IMO for trading vessels to see if this could provide an answer to the problem. The ISM system requires that the master and crew of a vessel provide a written report, which analyzes and describes the hazardous areas and activities that take place during the operation of the vessel (termed a safety management system). They are also required to state which precautions they will take to reduce or eliminate such hazards. Hence the fishermen are guided in a process whereby they have to think about safety on their own vessel using their particular fishing method, rather than rely on the provision of equipment and training which is specific neither to the vessel nor the fishing method. However, there are reports that the objective of this measure is being circumvented by owners hiring consultants to draw up the ISM reports for their vessels. There are also concerns about such a system causing excessive paper work and it being inappropriate for crew with limited literacy skills.

THE EFFECT OF OBLIGATORY TRAINING ON FATALITY RATES

For several reasons, nothing can be said with certainty about the effect obligatory training may have had in reducing injuries and fatalities in the fishing industry. Firstly, such studies must be done over a longer span of time than the few years that have passed since safety training became obligatory. In fact, obligatory training in many countries is still in an adaptive phase, and is to be fully implemented in a few years time. Secondly, fatality rates must be normalized against comparable data on the number of fishermen with respect to workdays, hours underway, total fish landed, or some other suitable figures in different types of fisheries. Such data are not available.

Thirdly, the effects of training need to be isolated from other factors. General technical improvement in fishing, increased safety awareness, preventive actions, better search and rescue services, etc. combine to reduce injuries and fatalities. Improved records of injuries may coincide with this, increasing the number of reported accidents. Thus the effects of training are masked by several other factors.

It may nevertheless be informative to look at the trends in fishermen fatalities reported by some of the countries that have introduced compulsory safety training for fishermen. In Norway and in Iceland, only half as many fatalities occurred among fishermen between 1995-99 as during the preceding five-year period (1990-94). In Denmark, the trend is in the same direction but not as marked. Figures on the number of man-hours at sea during these periods are not available. The trend has been a gradual reduction in the number of fishermen, but the fall in numbers alone is nowhere near enough to explain the marked drop in fatal accidents.

* 1989-98

One of the arguments against compulsory safety training is the cost that has to be carried by the fisherman and/or the community. The total cost varies from one country to another, as does the state subsidy. These costs, however, have to be measured against the multiple benefits of fewer accidents. The total cost in 1997 in Iceland of accidents at sea was estimated to be US$45-60 million, which constitutes 0.6 - 0.8% of the GDP. This includes the cost of marine insurance, search and rescue, medical treatment, social security compensation and personal cost estimated by the "willingness-to-pay method".³⁹ The cost of safety training involving 1,272 fishermen in that year was US$650,000, roughly 1% of the cost of accidents. These examples illustrate the point that it pays the community to invest in safety.

There is every reason to believe that safety training has positive effects on the rates of injuries and fatalities, although, for many reasons, this is difficult to prove with concrete figures.