The Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesting Safety Association (NL-FHSA) held its annual You Are My Anchor safety symposium in St. John’s on November 2, with a focus on vessel registration and emergency distress signaling.
The symposium opened with remarks from Brenda Greenslade, executive director of NL-FHSA and David Decker, board chair of NL-FHSA. Greenslade spoke on the symposium’s purpose and the focus on emergency distress signaling such as emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRBs) and personal locator beacons (PLBs)
“These are the leaders in the fish harvesting industry and occupational health and safety. These are the people who go out and spread their messages to other harvesters in the communities and so its really important to bring them in so that they know what’s going on — what’s happening, what’s new and what’s changed,” said Greenslade.
“What [the Transportation Safety Board] finds and what the investigations are showing is that year over year, we’re seeing the same deficiencies. They are deficiencies where emergency distress signaling would be paramount in saving lives and getting people rescued.”
Jason Spingle, secretary-treasurer of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW-Unifor) also spoke on the PLB/EPIRB campaign. He highlighted the danger of working as a fish harvester and how access to reliable distress signaling can be the difference between life and death in such a hazardous field of work. He noted that more than 9,000 people representing over 3,400 fishing enterprises work in the province.
“Over a 10-year period from 2012 to 2021, 20 fish harvesters ended up in the ocean following an incident at sea — unexpected immersion from a small open vessel or capsizing resulting in death from drowning or hypothermia. Five of the 20 harvesters were never recovered,” said Spingle.
“Access to reliable distress signaling in critical situations ultimately saves lives by improving search and rescue, and recovery efforts. The distress signaling capabilities and homing abilities of PLBs and EPIRBs allow for timely, efficient and more cost-effective search and rescue responses by industry and government.”
The event’s keynote speaker was Jeanette Russell. Her son, Marc Russell, and his friend Joey Jenkins were lost at sea off the coast of Labrador in 2021 after their vessel The Island Lady never returned from the last day of the fishing season. Russell highlighted the day she had lost her son, the emotions she felt and the events that transpired over the course of the search.
Russell highlighted deficiencies in the search and rescue process, including what she and her family believed to be an ineffective search in the first 48 hours due to bad weather and poor visibility. After 48 hours, the search was turned over by the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre to the RCMP, which many rallied against.
“Because search efforts had been gravely inhibited on Saturday due to inclement weather and gale-force winds, we lobbied that an additional 24 hours of search and rescue efforts was warranted, even if as a humanitarian effort. Late Sunday night, our family was plunged into a desperate situation where we had to take to social media to fight for additional time for Marc and Joey,” explained Russell.
She also highlighted the lack of available search and rescue resources outside of the island portion of the province. While 10 separate search and rescue bases exist in Newfoundland, not one has been relegated to Labrador. Russell has called for a federal commission of inquiry into the lack of resources in Labrador.
“It speaks to how massive this issue is — how many different agencies are involved in this issue; how much inter-agency operability is required to make the system work the way it’s meant to work for everybody,” said Russell. “So, it just speaks to all the different sub-conversations that are required to make everything work as a whole. Right now, in Labrador, the system doesn’t work. Everything has to come in from somewhere else.”
Russell also highlighted the importance of emergency distress signaling, noting that such equipment is mandatory on mid-shore and offshore fishing vessels, while inshore vessels are unregulated in this aspect. She has made a call to action to have these regulations changed to apply to all fishing vessels.
“The smaller inshore fleet are at more risk than these larger vessels, so it doesn’t even make sense. Their own policies don’t even make sense,” said Russell.
“So that’s why I feel a federal commission of inquiry is needed to look at the regulations that are meant to organize how these fisheries are conducted. Are they even safe?”
