Re: [Paddlewise] 2dead4missingNJ

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:26 AM, Dave Kruger <kdruger_at_pacifier.com> wrote:

>
> None of these items address Chuck's question.  I think the answer is that
> fishers do not wear anything like what Chuck describes; to do so would be
> regarded as "sissy" on deck, I think.  Yes, it is an odd, old-school
> culture, which changes slowly.  It has taken 30 years to get these guys to
> carry survival suits, which are now mandatory.  My fiance' works for a major
> west coast supplier to the trade (Englund Marine), and fishermen b*tch long
> and loud at the cost of the mandatory safety gear.
>
> I have to say that my experience with many years of deck work on everything
from salmon trollers to offshore drill ships to Exxon oil tankers makes me
tend to agree with Dave. The macho mindset of people who work on the ocean
can be counterproductive to safety. Add to this the simple fact that almost
all vessels (including ocean-going ships) are crewed only to barely meet
their daily operations; the loss of just one deck crewmember can cripple
their day-to-day operations. Imagine what a loss of a few people would do in
an emergency.

The Exxon Valdez, as an example, was the largest tanker in US operation and
carried fewer than 25 crew. Contrast that with a built-in-1956 Exxon ship I
sailed on in the 1990s which was 1/4 the size (in tonnage) and was certified
to carry 56 crew members. In the 1990s we ran it with 20 crew members. I
called the deck that would have housed all those then-vanished people the
"lost city of the Lexington". The engineers used those quarters as spare
parts storage.

Add to this the fact that many of these crews only receive on-the-job
training and they may have only once donned the "gumby" emergency survival
suits and even then it was probably in the office or warehouse and not under
the cramped conditions of a vessel in a seaway. And fishing boat crews are
notorious for being perpetually exhausted from overwork and lack of sleep.

These people also tend to be "results oriented" and their first inclination
is to solve the problem not get into survival mode.  Worse yet, it's very
difficult to know just where that line is between a ship that can be fixed
and a ship that is doomed to sink. It's just hard to tell and easy to deny.

The work suits that Jack Martin describes are commonly worn by deck crew on
the factory ships operating out of Dutch Harbor but even these have their
drawbacks (too warm on deck if you're working hard and way too warm below
deck). Even so, a factory fishing trawler will have nearly 100 people as
crew but as few as 20 of these will have insulated worksuits or even go out
on deck. The rest work below in the factory, galley, or offices and are not
encouraged to go outside. Off duty crew may only realize the ship is sinking
when they are awakened by the awkward angle. And the lighting may have
failed by then. Making their way to where the gumby suits are stored can be
problemmatic. Getting one on can be impossible. And all the time your brain
is screaming, "GET OUT!!!"

In 1998 we had no "work suits" on Exxon tankers even though we commonly
operated in and out of Valdez, Homer, Kenai, and Anchorage, Alaska. We did
have gumby suits, however.

There is no easy answer. Laws have changed a lot over the years. In 1971 -
when I ran my own fishing troller out of La Push and Neah Bay - we didn't
even have to carry life preservers (as they were called then, and apparently
again). Most boats were operated by a single person dressed in oilskins and
rubber boots with lots of wool and coffee to keep warm. Today the cost of
the safety gear, as Dave Kruger implies, takes a significant bite out of a
(very short) season's profits. Many would just as soon take their chances.
Besides that, just storing that stuff on a 35-foot boat can be a problem.

When I worked on drill ships in the 1970s I bought my own Mustang coat with
the flap and hood; mostly for the helicopter shuttles (the coat was too
stiff for working on deck). When they started putting us in gumbies for the
shuttles I carried the coat in my duffle "just in case". I suspect most
people who work on the water make their own safety and many are not aware of
the undergarments and layered clothing that's available now. And unless it
becomes macho to do it, they won't be that interested either.

And the lost radio officers are generally considered by the remaining crews
to have had a negative impact on safety. Those guys often kept the safety
equipment working. On one trip between Valdez and Panama the SatCom failed
and the RO went up every hour to manually aim the unit to keep
communications going. In addition he could use morse code in a pinch. They
fixed the radars, the lifeboat radios, and tested the EPIRBS (and knew what
to do if they failed the tests). Nowadays the Captains take a 2-week course
designed to get them to pass the FCC General Radiotelephone license; this
means they memorize the correct answers to the questions.  Even *they* don't
believe they are qualified to keep even the GMDSS equipment in operation
(but they meet the "legal" requirements). And the engineers seldom have that
knowledge either. One less person to pay. Safety is often a paper solution.

They don't even teach deck officers to throw a lead-line any more. They have
depth sounders now. But when we were on a sand bar in the Mississippi River
the Pilot wanted to know which side of the ship was deepest (in order to
direct the tugs which way to pull). I was the only person on the ship who
knew how to do that. The rest followed me around to learn. Oops... now I'm
getting cranky.


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
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