Fishermen React Warily to Safety Guidelines

Commercial fishermen in San Pedro expressed wariness to U.S. Coast Guard officials Saturday about new safety proposals that they said would increase their operating costs and create more regulatory hurdles.

Coast Guard officials, meanwhile, stressed that a few simple precautions could save countless lives.

“In looking at the casualties, the majority of them are preventable,” said Lt. Joe Paitl, part of a Coast Guard task force that examined 1,100 commercial fishing deaths. “Man overboard, [for example]--guy falls overboard, and he’s not floating because he doesn’t have a life jacket and the guy dies. We can prevent that from happening.”

Commercial fishing has been called the nation’s deadliest profession. In an average year, about 75 commercial fisherman lose their lives to the sea, and about 150 fishing boats are lost or destroyed. So far this year, 22 fishermen have died in this country, three of them along the California coast.

Saturday’s meeting was one of seven listening sessions being held nationwide by the Coast Guard on proposed safety measures.

Some of the 30 fishermen on hand wondered how many casualties were the result of weather conditions that would have rendered safety precautions useless.

“It doesn’t matter the amount of equipment you’ve got on a boat. At a certain sea condition, any boat can be beat by Mother Nature,” said Larry Mebust.

Because their livelihoods are at stake, fisherman admit they sometimes take risks by going out in bad weather.

Paitl pointed out that, over a recent five-year period, 49% of all fishing boat losses were caused by fixable design problems. As a result, the Coast Guard has proposed new requirements, such as better protected bulkheads and watertight hatches.

Other proposals include mandatory safety training for crew members, and compulsory dockside exams--either annual or biennial. Currently, dockside exams occur on a voluntary basis.

Some fishermen, though, wondered where they will get the money to train their crews, which sometimes turn over in a matter of weeks.

“If they’ve all gotta be mandatorily trained in a two-day session or something, who’s going to pay for that? It’s just going to be a horrendous cost impact,” Mebust said. “We’ll just be out of business. Some guys will just throw their hands up and say, ‘It’s not worth it.’ ”