As a small child on the docks, I remember staring at fishermen's hands as they stopped to talk with my parents. I knew it was impolite to stare, but I couldn't help but look at the knobby ends of missing fingers and wonder what had happened to cause those injuries. More than twenty years later, instead of staring at my parent's friends, I know the injured parties; they are friends, colleagues, and partners. Unfortunately, while the medical repairs are getting more impressive, the injuries haven’t subsided.
Over the last 20 years, the Alaska Fisherman's Fund has collected data on various injuries across the Alaskan commercial fishing fleet. Fishermen use the Alaska Fishermen's Fund (AFF) to attain medical coverage for fisheries-related injuries. One of the unintended advantages of the AFF is that we can use their data to acquire information on non-fatal injuries in the industry.
Most injuries onboard commercial fishing vessels go unreported, and the few cases that the AFF accepts are claims from people who don’t qualify for private insurance. Unfortunately, this means that we are missing not only data from the unreported cases but also from the privately insured portion of the fleet. However, knowing that the data is an incomplete picture of fishery-related injuries, we can still use the AFF data to begin a comprehensive analysis of injuries in the fleet.
The Journal of Agromedicine published an article on Workplace Injuries by Commercial Fishing Winches - Alaska, 2000-2020, using data from the AFF. The report pinpoints "deck machinery… as a primary source of injury on fishing vessels." The study looked at gear types, target species, nature of the injury, body part injured, kind of winch, and the injury narrative. They excluded incomplete information, inconclusive cause of injuries, and overuse and ear perforations from the report.
Looking at the AFF claims from January 2000 to November 2020, the researchers found that an average of 6 winch-related injuries occurred per year, and over 50% of the claims were in men aged 30 or less. The salmon industry had 80% of the winch-related injuries in Alaska, with Purse Seiners holding the title with 40% of the injuries.
Not all winches are created equal. There are many different brands, styles, powers, and uses of winches on boats. The researchers broke up winches into broad classifications to help understand how to classify and prevent future injuries. In cases that specified what type of winch caused the injury, over half of the accidents involved an anchor winch. Deck winches caused around 30% of the injuries, and trailers and “other types of winches” each had close to 9% of the total injuries fall under their classification.
Finding solutions to winch-caused accidents necessitates understanding how these
accidents occur. The AFF detailing an event narrative gave the researchers an essential
record of the leading causes of winch-related injuries. Loose clothing and body parts caught in or compressed by the winch and cables were to blame in 67% of the accidents. In addition, 17.5% of the injuries were caused by being struck by the winch or walking into the device, and 7.5% of the cases had to do with victims falling onto or against the winch.
The Workplace Injuries by Commercial Fishing Winches - Alaska, 2000-2020, created three potential solutions to help reduce winch-related injuries in commercial fisheries. 1) Install E-Stops for purse seine winches. 2) Encouraging mechanical solutions to anchor winches, such as guiding rods. 3) Administrative controls and training for fishermen, targeting younger inexperienced fishermen about winches and anchoring techniques.
The fisheries deserve to have attention paid to preventing winch-related injuries instead of how to fix dislocations, amputations, and lacerations after they have occurred. Let's reduce the number of people needing medical care in the commercial fishing industry by changing the gear worn around winches, installing E-stops on deck winches or guards on anchor winches, and acquiring training in how to use winches. With some basic adjustments to how people work with and around winches, we may reduce the number of winch-related injuries on commercial fishing vessels, ultimately saving vessels money and time. Doesn’t that sound worth it?
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