Guidelines for Health and Safety on Board Small Fishing Boats

The crew are the only people who can deal with an emergency at sea. Emergencies will be rare if the vessel is well maintained and well operated. As these situations don’t occur often it is difficult for the crew to react quickly when they do, unless they have practised (having conducted regular training exercises)!

Emergency training is practising safety drills on board the vessel while it is at sea. Ideally these are done at any time, but is easier when the vessel is not fishing but on the way to, between or from the fishing grounds.

This exercising, or practising, develops familiarity. Familiarity saves time.

In an emergency at sea you don’t have time to think !

Practice the drills and you will react quickly in a real emergency.

For skippers:

Things you must do on board

• Develop and use a training exercise programme on board.
• Practice all drills regularly and often – even the simple ones.
• Conduct basic Muster Stations and Man-Overboard drills at the earliest opportunity after leaving port each trip, especially if new crew members are on board.
• You must keep a record of all training and exercises that you undertake. A simple matrix as shown below can be constructed and used for this. Some Safe Ship Management manuals have similar record forms in them.

Other things you can do to increase your survival odds.

• Never assume everyone remembers or already knows.
• Conduct exercises for different emergency circumstances in different areas of the vessel each time.
• Talk through the use of the emergency gear used during each exercise.
• Never let your crew talk you out of doing an exercise. Yes they have done them before, yes they can be boring, but they must be done!
• Don’t think that you are only a very small crew that you don’t need to worry. If an emergency occurs you will have less people to rely on!
• Use the exercises to check your equipment. Operate hydrant valves to confirm they aren’t seized. Check hoses aren’t perished, Check extinguishers are in date.
• Work through “What if” scenarios with the crew after an exercise. Informally is always the best way on board a smaller vessel.

Legal requirements

• Under the HSE Act Section 13 regulations, employers must ensure staff are trained adequately and receive adequate supervision.

Maritime Rule Part 23 requires most fishing vessels that these guidelines were developed for, to have at least one Fire exercise and one Abandon Ship drill per month. It also requires the skipper of the vessel to ensure crew are familiar with their duties and the use of emergency equipment

• Training & Exercise Record Chart

Training record.

A Training record like that above should be in your SSM Manual.

If you make the effort to do the exercises it just takes a fraction more time to initial and date the record!