About us

FishSAFE is a committed fishing industry led, industry/government partnership with the aim of developing strategies to improve the safety performance of the New Zealand commercial fishing sector – in other words, to stop fishermen injuring themselves.

Membership of FishSAFE is open to all individual fishermen and representative organisations, as well as government agencies with an interest in health and safety in the commercial fishing industry. The current Chairman of FishSAFE is Peter Dawson from the NZ Federation of Commercial Fishermen. The current active membership includes representatives from the following organisations:

NZ Federation of Commercial Fishermen
New Zealand Fishing Vessel Owners Association
Greymouth Fishermen's Association
Port Nelson Fishermen's Association
New Zealand Fishing Industry Guild
Tuna New Zealand
New Zealand Seafood Industry Council
New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council
Sanford Ltd
Talleys
Sealord Group Ltd
New Zealand School of Fisheries
Seafood Industry Training Organisation
Accident Compensation Corporation
Maritime New Zealand

FishSAFE was formed in 2004, following the work of FishGroup, a Maritime NZ convened group focussed on identifying the causes of work-related near misses, injuries, and fatalities. The work was successfully completed in 2003 and a final report produced which made a series of 46 recommendations in the areas of communications and safety awareness, streamlining of compliance, training and development, human factors, and design, construction and equipment.

The key recommendation among these was the formation of an on-going industry-led body that focused on the promotion of safety within the fishing industry. The aim was to improve safety outcomes within the commercial fishing industry by developing and supporting industry and government partnerships, and facilitating industry led initiatives. This body was given oversight of the implementation of the recommendations contained in the final report, and became known as FishSAFE.

FishSAFE priorities to date have been the development of the Safety Guidelines for Small Commercial Fishing Vessels, and the development of associated injury prevention training. The target audience are the owners, operators and crew of fishing vessels under 24 metres in length. This is because that category of vessel makes up the large majority of the New Zealand fishing fleet in terms of both vessel numbers and people employed.

FishSAFE holds meetings periodically and the minutes of these can be found here.

FishSAFE

  • FishSAFE Meeting 8 May 2006
  • FishSAFE Meeting 29 Nov 2005
  • FishSAFE Meeting 15 Nov 2005
  • FishSAFE Meeting 3 May 2005