Race to Fish, Race to Peril

CAPE MAY — In the early morning hours of March 24, about 75 miles off the coast here in an area known as The Elephant’s Trunk, the 71-foot commercial fishing vessel Lady Mary went down.
The first distress signal was registered at 7:30 a.m. and Coast Guard helicopters out of Coast Guard Air Station, Atlantic City were on scene by 8:30 a.m. Rescue crews saved one man and pulled two others from the sea. Four other crew members were lost.
As with most sea casualties, we may never know exactly what chain of events caused the Lady Mary to go down that morning. The lone survivor, Jose Luis Arias, was grabbing a nap as those fateful events unfolded and wasn’t aroused until the boat was filling with water. He said the boat went down just minutes after he and the two others got into the water.
Commercial fishing is inherently dangerous. It is intensely physical, requires grueling hours of work over non-stop days with little sleep, and all while at the whims of Mother Nature.
According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, the risk of death in the commercial fishing industry is 36 times greater than any other occupation. This is certainly a call for corrective action.
Patrick Flanigan was a scallop fisherman here for 20 years and from 1976-1994 he owned his own scallop boat. Flanigan developed a unique knowledge and insight into an industry that can only be gained through firsthand experience.
He served as an expert witness in cases of fishermen injured on commercial vessels, and as a result decided to become a lawyer and represent the commercial fishing industry.
Flanigan cited several major issues besides the vessel sinking that adversely affect scallopers: exposure, falling overboard, fires, accidents due to handling of fishing gear, scallop dredge, tangled up in net or winch, and the constantly rolling deck.
He takes serious issue with Amendment 11 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan.
Beginning in September 2008 scallop boats have a quarterly quota system; the season opens and closes four times. When the season opens as it did on March 1, there is a mad dash to get to the scallops. The allotment for all scallop boats in one quarter is 1.6 million pounds.
All qualified boats try to get as much as they can never knowing when the quota will be reached. It is possible for the season to be closed earlier if monitors decide it is likely the total catch could go over the limit.
Therefore boats often go out regardless of weather once the season is open. Commercial boats are ultimately competing against each other.
Flanigan said this is called “a race to fish; a race to death.” He currently represents 26 scallop boat fishermen in a lawsuit against Amendment 11.
He knows there are other problems in the industry and said, “The best hope is for a mandatory safety certification before anyone could work on a commercial vessel. Education, training and mandated safety drills would enhance skill level and weed out those not able to do the job.”
Almost all of Flanigan’s concerns were addressed in the Coast Guard’s Report of the Fishing Vessel Casualty Task Force, 1999. That report followed the sinking of four commercial vessels off the coast of New Jersey in January 1999. A total of 11 men were lost.
The report pointed out several casualty characteristics: poor vessel or equipment condition, inadequate preparation for emergencies, and lack of awareness of, or ignoring stability issues.
Most casualties are preventable, the report concluded.
“The history of fishing vessel safety clearly shows that a solid foundation of comprehensive standards was never built. Safety standards are low often resulting in a lax approach to vessel condition and crew knowledge.
“Casualties are seldom attributable to a single factor that causes the event, the so-called “root cause.”
That same report called for a “courageous national policy…to solve the problem of too many fishermen competing for too few fish, who in the process sometimes defer safety out of economic necessity.”
While fishing vessel safety has few required standards, fisheries are regulated to a high degree in order to manage the resource. There are quotas, time restrictions, species restrictions, catch size and age, vessel size, crew sizes, and other regulatory controls.
“The current orientation of these positions is to support resource protection rather than safety improvement,” the report goes on to say.
Flanigan agrees with this last statement. He points out that in the 10 National Standards of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management and Conservation Act, only the very last one mentions the word safety. The emphasis for the other standards is on conservation and fishery management issues.
Erling Berg, Cape May, fished Georges Bank and the Mid-Atlantic for scallops, surf clams, ocean quahogs and ground fish from 1958 to 1992. He served on the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission and is currently on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. He was an advisor on the Casualty Task Force. He knows the industry well.
In 1991, Berg became a marine safety instructor. “Safety courses are available,” Berg said, “and classes can be arranged any time, anywhere they are requested. Safety drills are mandated, but not enforced or verified.”
Berg acknowledges that in the 10 years since the report was published not much has changed. He wants commercial fishermen to “commit a day (to training) and save a life.”
“The commercial fishing industry is up against powerful and well-funded environmental groups. Commercial fishermen will have to find a way to have their voices heard. They need to get involved, to find a way to be a present at meetings. New England commercial fishermen are forming strong groups to lobby for their concerns. It’s the only way things are going to change,” Flanigan said.
It seems that greater compliance with existing regulations and improved standards for commercial fishing will result in lower vessel loss and fatality rates.
Can the industry wait another 10 years?