Tue Jul 09, 2013 4:15 pm
"Fishing skippers will be able to apply for grant-aid for safety equipment as one of a series of Government measures announced today aimed at reducing deaths at sea."
What good is it having the gear but not using it properly or locking it away somewhere. It should be made mandatory first to use proper safety devices, even if it seems awkward but better than ending up in Davy Jones's Locker.
Also, I always find that there is a certain superstitiousness still quite common amongst those who work with the sea. Even being able to swim seems to be a bad omen for some.
And of course, the possibly biggest hurdle to overcome is the enforcement or control of these new laws. This would only work with automatic and sealed security cameras on every single vessel. And do we have the moneys available? Easy to speak of "zero tolerance in regard to non-compliance"... but sure, I'm all for it! Every life lost at sea is one too many!
Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:39 am
As some of you's already know im sadly in a position to know about safety at sea.
Its all very well having the correct equipment etc, but what happens if the unexpected happens whilst the crew are in their bunks as was the case with my experience..... It took less than 15 minutes between the last radio communication and the EPIRB transmitting, so really, what hope did the crew have?
And one thing that should be noted here, the MAIB tried to argue that 4 members of the crew had not done the mandatory (basic) safety at sea training (for fishing), the reason for this was they were all auxillary Coast Guards and as a result had had training which exceeded the basic fishing training...
What needs to be done is more tighter controls on the boats, bring in random checks of the boat if need be, dont wait till the next loss to say, 'if we change that we can reduce incidents by x'