Above photo: Miss Ally leaving West Head on February 12, 2013. Photo courtesy of Della Sears Newell
The adoption and implementation of safe fishing practices in the Nova Scotia fishing industry is paying off in terms of lives saved, less injuries and the lowest Worker’s Compensation rates in 20 years.
“Since 2016, the fishing industry has saved $7.5 million in premiums” for Worker’s Compensation, said Amanda Dedrick executive director of the Nova Scotia Fisheries Safety Association (NSFSA), for a decline of 39 per cent over the last several years.
Over the past five years, the rate has declined about 50 per cent, says Stuart MacLean CEO of Nova Scotia Worker’s Compensation Board. He credits the success to the collaborative effort that went into creating the comprehensive five-year Fishing Safety Now plan that was implemented in 2015; “an industry-led initiative to basically create the conditions for success for the fishing sector and the future,” said MacLean.
“Its fundamentally the way industry has come together and really taken all the different things that we can really have an impact on and considered them in terms of how we can improve from a safety perspective,” said MacLean. “I think its been very effective and something I think other industries in the province can learn from. The fishing sector has provided amazing leadership in this initiative and really moved from knowing about safety and not being happy with the premiums, to caring about safety and understanding it’s an investment in the people who are working in the sector to come home safely to their families. Industry knows too well the hardship that goes along with being on the sea.”
Fishing Safety Now, which contains 33 recommendations from 10 working groups, is going into year three, said Dedrick. The project is being co-managed by the NSFSA and the Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council. “The big thing this year is the wheelhouse safety logbooks and the safety equipment checklist. That’s some of the work coming out of those working groups,” said Dedrick.
Both resources are in response to the new Fishing Vessel Safety Regulations from Transport Canada to help industry comply. “The big message is we are all working together to make this stuff happen and that includes the industry,” she said.
Man overboard drills, town hall meetings and safety training courses are among the ongoing initiatives of the NSFSA, who often partner with the Department of Labour and Transport Canada in delivering safety messages, demonstrations and training.
Since 2012, the NSFSA has conducted more than 120 man overboard drills in the province.
“There’s all kinds of evidence of improvements and perhaps the most important one is the incidents of fatality in the sector and losing people overboard,” said MacLean. “We are hearing many stories of people wearing a PFD getting caught in gear and this is how they got saved. We’re having those kinds of stories come forward rather than stories like the Miss Ally where five people were lost at sea.”
In that same year as the Miss Ally was lost (2013), there was another tragic loss at sea that MacLean said he took personally, because the fisherman, Michael Doucette of Pubnico, was the same age as his son when he drowned.
“I remember getting the message this young man was lost off the deck off a boat and he was gone for an hour before anyone noticed him missing and it was January. I took it personally,” he said.
“Then when the Miss Ally went down, that was a game changer. It wasn’t just Woods Harbour that felt that. It was everyone in the province, every human being ached for those people that were lost at sea and for the mothers, fathers, spouses and children left behind. It was an unacceptable outcome. It really resonated with the industry. That event has resulted in actually transforming the way we think about it (safety) and what we do… it’s the can-do attitude of everybody leaning in and saying lets all participate, lets contribute, that’s what really makes this remarkable.”
