Coast Guard to begin commercial fishing safety effort

The Coast Guard is begins a commercial fishing safety effort Sunday to coincide with the start of the cold weather season, which brings rougher seas.

Operation Safe Catch is focused on increasing the rate of compliance with safety regulations by interacting with the commercial fishing industry to improve risk-management practices, according to a Coast Guard news release. The area included in the effort starts near the North and South Carolina border and stretches along the coast north to the Shrewsbury River in New Jersey.

Each year, an average of 40 people die while working in commercial fishing operations, the news release said, and that accounts for 27 percent of the five-year average of commercial mariner deaths and injuries. From Jan. 1, 2004, to Sept. 20, there were 51 commercial fishing vessel accidents, resulting in 28 deaths and 37 vessels lost. The primary causes were uncontrolled flooding, capsizing and sinking.

The Coast Guard will send boarding teams and dockside examiners to check safety equipment through the cold weather season, which ends April 30, the news release said. Teams and examiners will look for things such as immersion suits, survival craft, fire extinguishers, high-water alarms and overloading.

Vessels in poor condition with inadequate safety equipment, vessels with a history of repeated search and rescue interventions, and those that engage in high-risk fishery operations will be the focus of Coast Guard examiners.

For more information about the Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety program, visit www.fishsafe.info.