Articles Posted in Fishing Industry

After about ten years of investigation, studies, assessments, and meetings, the Akutan Airport Construction Project, awarded to Kiewit Infrastructure West Company, got underway on Akun Island in March of 2010 and is to be finished in the fall of 2012. There, Kiewit is building a 4,500 foot long paved runway, a taxiway, an apron, a sand storage building, a snow removal equipment building, a hovercraft maintenance and storage facility, three hovercraft landing pads, an access pad, and surrounding roads. According to Alaska DOT web site information, the federal budget slated for the project is $54,565,000.00. The total cost of the project, which is purported to be around $75 million, is additionally funded with state and local funding, including $1 million from Trident Seafoods Company. In addition to the airport on Akun Island, a hovercraft storage facility, pad, and ramp are under construction at Akutan Island. The hovercraft portion of the project is said to cost around $13 million, $11 million of which buys the hovercraft itself.

Akutan and Akun Islands are located about halfway into the Aleutian Chain, just east of Unalaska Island. The Akutan Island terrain is not amenable to building an airport, which is why Akutan Airport is being built on uninhabited Akun Island. Akun Island is about seven miles east across Akutan Harbor, so hovercraft service is crucial for connecting the airport with the City of Akutan.
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The Congress and the President passed a new law recently, which gives the USCG the authority to replace aging ships and aircraft with modern craft, improve USCG stations and housing, train personnel, and strengthens maritime security.

Specific to the commercial fishing industry, the Act provides the USCG more authority to amend and clarify, regulate, and enforce safety standards. Vessel and equipment standards now are to be determined based on where the vessel operates, not on where it’s registered. The goal of these uniform standards is to ensure fairness and to simplify to application of regulations. The emphasis here is on safety, both to prevent accidents and to buy survival time while awaiting rescue. The amendments in the Act include the following:
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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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