fish-news.com July 2010
The Northeast fishing fleet is getting old. Although some impressive state-of-the-art offshore scallopers have been built in recent years, particularly in New Bedford, the sobering fact is that well over half of the boats holding federal scallop and/or groundfish permits were constructed between 1970 and 1989, meaning these hulls are 21-to-40 years old.
The New England Fishery Management Council has been concerned about the safety implications of the region’s aging fleet for some time now. Hoping to get a better grip on the situation, it asked the Coast Guard back in April for more information about age and size of both scallop and groundfish boats and the casualties associated with them.
During the council’s June 22-24 meeting in Portland, Capt. Pete DeCola of the First Coast Guard District presented some early findings.
Two stark points emerged from the initial data run.
First, of the vessels holding Northeast multispecies permits, 23% were built between 1970 and 1979 and 42% of the vessels in that age group suffered casualties of one sort or another.
Second, among scallopers, only 5% of the fleet consisted of vessels in the 30'-39' category, yet those boats accounted for 16% of casualties.
Maine council member Jim Odlin called the report “revealing” in that it confirmed “some of the hunches” he had.
“There’s a lot in here that we can use,” Odlin said.
Data
The report represents the Coast Guard’s first cut at running the numbers, and the council was quick to ask for more breakdowns by different categories, which DeCola said the First District could do with additional help from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to narrow down and further refine the permit data.
For this particular run, the Coast Guard used the NMFS Northeast Region permit database to obtain information about the number of vessels holding groundfish, scallop, or both permit types.
The Coast Guard also used safety data from the First District Fishing Vessel Casualty Database and the Coast Guard’s Marine Information for Safety & Law Enforcement pool.
The casualty data involved “reported casualties in the scallop and multispecies fleets from 2008 to the present to give a quick and manageable snapshot of the safety picture,” DeCola said.
Casualties included vessels that became disabled, went aground, collided, capsized, sank, flooded, caught fire, or somehow involved personal injuries, man overboard incidents, or required medevacs.
Scallopers
For scallopers, the Coast Guard looked at a total pool of 873 permits, which included the regular full-time/part-time/occasional limited-access fleet, the general category fleet, boats that held both a regular limited-access permit and a general category permit, and scallop vessels that also held groundfish permits.
Of those 873 permits: 26 were on vessels built between 2006 and 2010; 97 were on boats built between 2000-2005, and 91 were on vessels built between 1990-1999.
However, the next 66% of the boats were 21-40 years old with 323 having been built between 1980 and 1989 and 253 being built between 1970 and 1979. Another 67 boats were built between 1900 and 1969 and another 16 vessels were classified as “unknown.”
According to the analysis, 55% of all scallop-permitted vessels were between 60' and 89' in length, with another 19% falling in the 40'-49' category.
Vessels in the 1970-1979 group accounted for 29% of the fleet yet resulted in 38% of the casualties, which on the surface was a disproportionate number.
“This possibly suggests that older ships have more casualties than newer ships,” said DeCola.
General category?
Some council members questioned whether the information would be more useful if it was broken down into two separate components – one for the general category fishery and another for the regular limited-access scallop fleet – to see whether general category boats had suffered a higher percentage of casualties than the full-time fleet.
New Hampshire council member David Goethel noted that many fishermen had converted small-to-midsize boats from other fisheries, including the southern shrimp fishery, into general category scallopers, and some of these converted vessels had had stability issues. He said it would be interesting to know how these boats in particular fared in the casualty report.
“Some people have made unwise modifications to vessels, and I think that’s a serious problem,” Goethel said.
Groundfish
The groundfish numbers were a bit more complicated due to the simple fact that the Coast Guard used all 3,244 permits in the database, including open-access groundfish permits, in the analysis. Many fishermen throughout the region routinely obtain an open-access groundfish permit to cover bycatch in their targeted fisheries, which could be herring or other species in the Northeast.
Nonetheless, the analysis clearly showed that, no matter what vessels these groundfish permits were on, some of the boats were getting old. About 56% of the boats holding groundfish permits were built between 1970 and 1989, making them 21-40 years old.
On a more positive note, 27% of the boats were built between 1990 and 2005, and another 188 boats were built between 2006 and 2010. But again, these might not be targeted groundfish boats. Rather, they might be working in other fisheries and merely be in possession of an open-access groundfish permit.
The data on vessel size was intriguing. It seemed that 299 boats with groundfish permits were between 0'-19' in length, and a full 61% were in the 20'-49' range. Of these, 471 were 21'-29' and 899 were 30'-39'.
In a huge shift from the old days, the Northeast region now has only 96 boats in the 90+-foot category that possess groundfish permits. On the order of 197 boats in the 80'-89' category still hold groundfish permits of one sort or another.
A problem spot
Groundfish permit-carrying boats that were built three or four decades ago seemed to be a trouble spot in the data.
Of note, DeCola said the 1970-1979 year group, which represents 31-to-40-year-old vessels, had a larger percentage of casualties with 23% of the fleet accounting for 42% of the casualties. This again suggested that older boats have more casualties than newer boats.
He also pointed out that vessels in the “newer” category, referring to those in the 1990-1999 range, which accounted for 10% of the fleet, had only 5% of the reported casualties.
DeCola cautioned that council members needed to be careful in interpreting the data because the number of casualties only reflected “reported” events in the Northeast. It did not include unreported events, of which there are many, and “near misses,” which could be 10-times higher than unreported events.
After all, who takes time to properly report an engine room fire that the crew managed to successfully extinguish?
More info wanted
Many council members said they found the report enlightening and helpful, even though they hoped that further breakdowns and analyses would produce an even better picture of the age of the fleet and what it means for vessel safety.
“We’re operating with a lot of really old boats in the region,” said Maine council member Mary Beth Tooley.
But the predicament was difficult, she added, because “you’re not going to make people buy a new boat.”
Tooley encouraged the council to continue including this type of information in environmental impact statements that accompany fishery management plan amendments and frameworks.
Stability, man overboard
Massachusetts council member Rodney Avila also encouraged people to focus more on vessel stability. As fishermen reconfigure vessels to participate in alternate fisheries or to carry more product in targeted fisheries, stability problems can crop up without proper inspections and stability tests, he said.
DeCola, too, voiced concerns about stability.
“We have very good data on what is causing fatalities in the fishing fleet and we’ve focused our outreach accordingly,” he said. “We can’t afford to lose sight of the fact that, nationwide, 51% of fatalities result from a loss of vessel stability and another 28% of fatalities result from man-overboard situations.”
Given these troubling statistics, DeCola said the Coast Guard places added emphasis on its voluntary dockside exam program, the new “upright and watertight” training classes, and promoting the use of flotation-equipped foul weather and working gear.
Furthermore, he said, the Coast Guard works to support outside industry programs such as fishermen’s safety training classes and continues to develop outreach materials in an effort to significantly reduce vessel casualties and fatalities.
Source: fish-news.com
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