Commercial Fishing Safety Training

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT J. DZUGAN Commercial Fishing Safety Training This project will increase the train-the-trainer and commercial fishing safety workshop efforts of the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association (AMSEA). AMSEA's goal is to continue to expand the network of port-based fishing safety instructors around Alaska and the U.S., as it has for the last 25 years. The goal is to provide fishermen with credible fishing safety instructors, from the fishing industry, who know the local area and local fishery risks. The training will also help them meet training requirements and reduce the number, and rate, of fatalities. This project is very relevant to public health in the workplace. Commercial fishing still suffers from the first or second (depending on the year) occupational fatality rate of any major occupation in the U.S., despite steady decreases in the last 25 years. Recent federal training requirements will increase the amount of safety training needed by operators of fishing vessels and assist in lowering fatalities further. Refresher safety training of fishermen will also be required. Large areas of the nation still lack training infrastructure to deliver safety training relevant to the fishing industry and to meet new mandates. New trainers take a Coast Guard accepted intensive 48-hour Marine Safety Instructor-Training (MSIT) course that provides practice in marine safety equipment and procedures, methods of instruction and how to reduce risks in training and in fisheries. These instructors then co-teach commercial fishermen with experienced AMSEA Training Coordinators and they are mentored until they are effective. AMSEA staff provide USCG approved certification plus their time, training equipment and new teaching resources at no cost to these new instructors. Central to these training efforts is the emphasis on performance-based, hands-on training. Fishermen need to complete an assessment in skills like immersion suit donning in a timed interval, stating an emergency radio message, righting and entering a liferaft in the water and other skills which casualty reports have stated were not performed correctly and resulted in fatalities. About 50% of this training effort will take place outside Alaska on all coasts of the U.S. These short one to two day workshops in Emergency Drill Conductor, Cold Water Survival, Stability/Flooding Control etc. will help fishermen meet new requirements and provide much needed emergency skills to thousands of fishermen in scores of far flung ports in the U.S.