Dangers of the Deep
Fishing is one of America's most perilous jobs. Can anything be done to make it safer?
Skeptics. Some lawmakers aren't convinced. "We have the best safety requirements of any fishing nation in the world," argues Don Young, a Republican from Alaska who heads a congressional committee that oversees the Coast Guard. Young plans to review the Coast Guard's proposal, but he's skeptical. "We'll see whether it's justified or if it's just another attempt to have more government intrusion in private enterprise," he says. "Why should some snot-nosed lieutenant say you can't go fishing because of this or that?"
Fishermen complain that more safety rules would further choke an industry already suffering from government-imposed catch limits. Amid concerns about declining fish populations, regulators have also moved to limit catches, shorten fishing seasons, and declare some prime fishing grounds "off limits" until fish populations recover. Fishermen argue that some of those limitations have actually made commercial fishing less safe by increasing the pressure on them to make the most of their time at sea, even when weather conditions might otherwise send them back to port.
In the case of the Northern Edge, some pointed out, a complicated rule had forced the boat to return from a previous fishing trip before it had filled its quota. Given a short time window to complete a "compensation trip" the following month, the boat's captain "was under a lot of pressure to stay out there and make up for all the time and fuel he'd already spent," says Herman Bruce, a longtime scalloper from New Bedford, Mass. Under public pressure, regulators have since eliminated the controversial rule.
Some express similar concern over the fate of the Big Valley, which went down in rough seas off Alaska during last January's snow crab fishing season, killing skipper Gary Edwards and four crewmen. The 92-foot boat had seen the annual season for Alaskan snow crab shrink from five months in the early 1990s to just five days last January, forcing its crew and the rest of the 200-boat fleet to work nonstop to lay as many crab traps, or "pots," as possible, then retrieve them before the clock ran out.
The weather "wasn't nice but it wasn't bad," Josh Trosvig recalls of the day both the Big Valley and his boat, the Diligence, headed for the Bering Sea. State law allowed both boats to fish 70 crab pots at a time, each weighing about 600 pounds. But the Coast Guard had limited the Big Valley to carrying just 31 pots, because it was one of the smallest boats in the fleet. Thirty-one, evidently, wasn't enough for Edwards, whose boat left port with 55 pots and 183,000 pounds of bait--more than three times as much as officially allowed, according to a preliminary Coast Guard investigation.
Just what caused the boat to capsize may never be known. But it is clear that "the Big Valley was improperly loaded," says Coast Guard Lt. Commander Chris Woodley. Trosvig counters that his friend, skipper Edwards, might never have loaded so many pots on his boat if not for a state rule that prevented other crabbers from helping out and carrying pots for him. But the Coast Guard's Woodley also points out that the crewmen who died had not properly donned their survival suits.
The arguments over safety rules continue, but for many fishermen, they are beside the point. "We were heartbroken . . . and we pray it doesn't happen to us," Trosvig says of his friends on the Big Valley. "But this is our way of life. People just have to accept that."
Fatality Rates
(2003 data: deaths per 100,000 workers)
Loggers 131.6
Fishers 115
Aircraft pilots 97.4
Police officers 20.9
Firefighters 17.4
Office workers 0.6
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
USN&WR
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