Fatigue problem big issue for fishing industry

When the skipper of the fishing boat Joanne fell asleep at the wheel, the vessel collided with the fully laden tanker Hellas Constellation at the approaches to Tauranga Harbour early one May morning.

The same month the fishing boat Recovery 2 ran aground while enroute from Greymouth to Nelson when the watchkeeper fell asleep.

Earlier this year two other vessels - the Kathleen G and the Physalie - ran aground in the Marlborough Sounds because their skippers were fatigued and fell asleep.

And about 2.15am on March 26 the Bronny G ran aground on Banks Peninsula.

The three-man crew was forced to scramble across the rocks to safety. The crew member who was on watch had fallen asleep.

No one was seriously injured in any of these incidents, but they are all part of a major health and safety issue for the fishing industry -- fatigue.

In a survey last year a significant number of seafarers admitted making "little mistakes" or "poor decisions" because they were fatigued, including watchkeepers "nodding off" on midnight to 6am shifts.

The matter is receiving a great deal of attention from the Maritime Safety Authority (MSA) which is working with the fishing industry to try to alleviate the problem and hopes to soon have guidelines in place to help deal with it.

MSA strategic analysis and planning manager Sharyn Forsyth says fatigue in the fishing industry is largely due to the nature of fishing.

"The margins are tight, so it's obvious that when the fish are out there, you fish. The problem is that sleep becomes the lesser priority and not everyone gets enough of it," she said in a recent article in the Seafood Industry magazine.

"There's no doubt that fatigue impacts on how effectively you carry out your work, and how you respond when things go wrong. It's also a clear contributing causal factor in many MSA accident investigations."

Ms Forsyth is co-ordinating a working group which is developing a broad strategy to tackle fatigue throughout the commercial maritime industry, followed by fatigue management guidelines for the commercial fishing industry.

Results from recent research, international studies and best practice are being used to develop these guidelines. They will include practical methods for managing fatigue and will be used as the basis for fatigue management training and education.

New Zealand Federation of Commercial Fishermen executive director Peter Dawson says fatigue is a difficult problem to address, considering the nature of the job.

In October, commenting on the findings into the groundings of the Kathleen G and the Physalie, he said other industries such as trucking had rules regarding the number of hours at the wheel, but it was hard to set similar rules for the fishing industry.

"The fishing boat is a different working environment," he said.

"It is constantly moving, work comes in short bursts and it's physical. You also have the x-factor of the weather, so it's a hard working environment to manage," Mr Dawson said.

Ms Forsyth said there was little point in establishing detailed rules around sleep as it was difficult to make a rule that fitted every situation.

"We want to give the industry guidelines with useful and practical tips for managing fatigue which will help encourage a change in behaviour," she said.

One suggestion was that fishing boats take along an extra person who would "drive" the boat out to the fishing grounds, then rest while the fishing is carried out before driving back.

But that has practical difficulties.

"If you're an owner-operator you don't want to have an extra body on your vessel that's not contributing," Ms Forsyth said.

"If you've got somebody who sits around for the whole time not doing anything at all it's wasted space. Most of these boats are quite small too and they can't practically fit extra people on board."

The working group establishing the fatigue guidelines is a sub-group of FishSAFE, which is the MSA-convened fishing industry safety and heath advisory group.

FishSAFE is made up of a wide cross-section of representatives from the commercial fishing industry, ACC and the Fisheries Ministry.

Ms Forsyth says the working group includes industry representatives who know what the issues are for fishermen, so the guidelines will be clear and useful.

The MSA is also working with the Sleep/Wake Centre at Massey University on a specific fatigue management policy.

Centre director Associate Professor Philippa Gander is developing generic fatigue management guidelines which would probably be sent to the MSA soon.

"We'll be calling together a meeting of people from across the industry in late February to look at those (guidelines) and get their input," Ms Forsyth said.

"We'll look at how they will work practically within not just the fishing industry, but all of the other industries affected."

She said the result would probably be a mixture of a prescriptive approach and a fatigue management approach.

The draft guidelines are expected to be available for industry consultation in April 2005.

- NZPA