If you are suffering from fatigue you will not be able to do your work properly and safely. Sometimes people
do not actually realise that they are fatigued.
- Don't get enough sleep
- Work very hard, either physically or mentally, and don't have time to recover from the work
- Work for too long
- Work when the body is programmed to sleep (e.g. in the middle of the night)
- Can't sleep when they have the chance
- Have poor quality sleep (e.g. sleep might be interrupted, or there might be something wrong with where you're
trying to sleep - too much light, noise, vibration, the vessel is moving, it is too hot or too cold).
Most people need
7 – 8 hours of sleep a night to be fully rested. Most (but not all) can get by
on 6 hours of unbroken sleep a night for a few nights until the pressure for
sleep increases to dangerous levels.
With less than 6 hours sleep a night the pressure for sleep increases
rapidly. The risk of falling asleep or
making a mistake also increases rapidly and needs to be managed. With lack of sleep the brain takes
‘micro sleeps’, turning itself off from the outside work for a short time
(people who are ‘asleep on their feet’). Eventually this will turn into continuous sleep.
If people go for several days without enough sleep, they are more likely to be affected by fatigue and to take
longer to recover from the lack of sleep. This is called "sleep debt".
People naturally
want to sleep at night, especially in the early morning, and feel sleepy in
mid-afternoon. Late morning and early
afternoon is when we feel naturally alert. So as a result night workers usually sleep 2 – 3 hours less every 24 hours
than they need to be fully rested, because they try to sleep in their natural "alert times".
Is
fatigue a significant hazard on my vessel?
Fatigue is likely to be an issue at some point on nearly every
fishing vessel because of the sort of work that is being done – hard, physical
and sometimes monotonous. If the answer
to any of the following questions is yes, fatigue is likely to be a significant
hazard on your vessel:
- Does anyone on the boat usually start work before 0700 or finish after
2200?
- Is the work day usually longer than 12 hours?
- Is it a demanding work environment (e.g. lots of noise, vibration, heat
or cold, rough sea conditions)?
- Are work demands unpredictable?
- Is working on the boat constantly physically or mentally demanding?
- Do people working on the boat say they’re tired a lot or at particular
times of trips?
- Does the crew report feeling excessively tired, or have health problems
that affect their sleep?
- Do employees commute long distances to work?
The use of alcohol and drugs can also lead to people falling asleep or becoming
fatigued when they normally wouldn't.
How
can I tell if someone is fatigued?
Someone who is fatigued won’t
always look or feel fatigued, particularly if they have come off a ‘high’, such
as handling a good catch. It sometimes helps to think about the amount of sleep
a person had recently, and what kind of work they have been doing. This "history"
helps to identify if someone is at risk of being fatigued.
People who are fatigued might:
- Be very irritable (more than usual)
- Be uncommunicative, or unclear when they talk
- Forget things quickly, like something you’ve just told them or how to
do something they know how to do
- Be unable to stay focused on a task
- Be preoccupied with parts of a problem, missing warning signs and
losing “the big picture”
- Cut corners to get the job finished
- Take unusual risks
- Poor judgement of distance, speed and/or time
- Have slow reactions to things that happen, or people talking to them
- Slurred or muddled speech
- Clumsiness
- Be obviously asleep
Legal Requirements
- Fatigue is a hazard under the HSE Act.
- Employers have to take all practicable steps to manage fatigue as a
hazard and need to involve employees in identifying fatigue problems and
how to control them.
- Maritime New
Zealand will be requiring every vessel
owner to develop and have approved a Fatigue Management Plan as part of
the SSM Manual, where fatigue is a significant hazard.
How can we manage fatigue on board our vessel?
If people on your vessel are at risk of fatigue, the skipper will need to write a
fatigue management plan (which is the details about how you are going to manage fatigue
as a hazard). There is more information about fatigue management plans later in this
section.
If fatigue is not an issue for people on your vessel, everyone involved (owner,
skipper and crew) should agree that fatigue doesn't need to be actively managed at the
moment. The skipper should write down when and why you decided to do this (so that anyone
checking your hazard management systems knows you've thought about it).
Action Points
- There is no one right way to manage fatigue – the solutions need to
fit your boat, its operation, and the skipper and crew who work on board
- Owners, skippers, crew, partners and safety advisors should be
involved in developing the fatigue management plan
- Everyone should learn about fatigue. It’s a good idea for everyone to attend a training session about
fatigue management.
- Make sure everyone regularly has time off for sleep. A minimum of six hours continuous sleep in every
24 hours is recommended (time sleeping is not the same as time off)
- Take short naps whenever possible (40 minute and two hour naps are the best timing, if you want to
work soon after waking up). This works best before a person actually gets tired.
For Skippers
- Assess whether fatigue is a significant hazard and develop a Fatigue Management Plan
- Work out what you’re going to do when things occasionally go wrong
and you can’t stick to your Fatigue Management Plan. (These Contingency
Plans should form part of the Fatigue Management Plan)
- Make sure you are regularly reviewing levels of fatigue and how
well your Fatigue Management Plan is working. You could make fatigue an item at each
of your regular safety meetings. Any time you monitor or review the plan,
make a note in your SSM Manual. This will prove that you’re doing what is
required.
- Make sure everyone has somewhere dry and light-proof to sleep
- Talk about fatigue with the crew before they actually get tired.
Make sure they know you know its human to get tired and that it’s better
to admit it than hide it
- Provide healthy food
- Plan ‘rest days’ so that cumulative fatigue doesn’t become a
problem.
- Work out in advance how you’ll cope if someone gets fatigued
- Install watchkeeper alarms if appropriate. It is important not to rely solely on watchkeeper
alarms as some people will sleep through them. The long-term solution is good
planning and management of the watch activity.
- Make sure people on watch at night have activities to keep them
active.
- Provide caffeine and energy drinks which can help keep people alert
for short periods of time
- Make sure watchkeepers
feel comfortable waking someone else if they get tired
A Fatigue Management Plan
A fatigue management plan is an organized way of managing fatigue as a
hazard. In practice, a good fatigue
management plan has two major parts –
- What to do on the boat to manage fatigue; and
- What the owner or skipper has to do to keep an eye on how the plan is
implemented and make sure it’s up to date.
The owner, skipper and crew should work together to develop the fatigue
management plan. Everyone has different
job demands and experiences fatigue differently.
If you have decided that fatigue is a significant hazard on board your vessel, you
need to show that you have thought about
- Why people are getting fatigued
- How you can stop it happening
- How you can cut down on how much it happens.
You should also look at how you will deal with someone who is fatigued. When you’ve worked these things through, you
need to write them down.
The fatigue management plan should be put up where everyone can see it and read it. A laminated sheet on the bridge and in the
crew mess is a good way to do this. How the plan will be monitored and kept up to date should go in the SSM manual.