Articles Posted in Fishing Industry

Too many casualties in the fishing industry, including amputations and death, are caused by unguarded machinery parts catching a worker’s fingers, limbs, clothing, or hair. Long hours with little rest, the fast pace of work, and rolling seas increase the risk when the moving parts of a machine are not properly guarded from human contact during operation and properly shut down during maintenance. Coast Guard regulations on machine guarding are very clear and the courts tend to rule accordingly.

In Fuszek v. Royal King Fisheries, Inc., 98 F.3d 514 (1996), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that a seaman is entitled to full damages, and not subject to reduced damages for comparative negligence, when the employer violates U.S. Coast Guard regulation. In Mr. Fuszek’s case, the question was not whether the machine was guarded, for all admitted and agreed that it was not guarded. The question was whether Mr. Fuszek’s award for damages should be diminished due to what the defendants claimed was Mr. Fuszek’s comparative negligence.
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A preliminary report for 2010, made this past August by the U.S. Bureau of Labor, shows that fishers and those in related fishing industry work continue to have the highest fatal injury rate of all employment categories in the U.S. This chart sums up the higher than average occupation-related death rate in the fishing industry:

Year – Fatalities per 100,000

2010 – 116

2009 – 200

2008 – 129

2007 – 112

2006 – 141

2005 – 118.

According to NTSB data, the death rate averaged 158 per 100,000 between 1992 to 2008 for the fishing industry, whereas the national work fatality average for that time period was four deaths in 100,000. Recognition of this unconscionable death rate, as well as the high rate of non-fatal injuries, and the financial and emotional costs involved in work-related death or injury has driven a focus on better fishing-related safety.
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