Congress tackles new safety laws for fishing fleet

Congress this year may impose new construction standards on the nation's fishing vessels, require training of skippers and mandate Coast Guard inspections in what would be the first major overhaul of the safety laws that regulate the nation's deadliest occupation.

The big push for new safety legislation comes from a Midwestern congressman, Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., whose district is far from the major fishing ports. Oberstar chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which this month approved new regulation of the fishing industry.

The legislation has been under development for more than two years and is expected to go to the full House for a vote this summer.

In the Senate, Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell has a key role in tackling industry safety through her chairmanship of the Senate subcommittee with oversight over the Coast Guard and fisheries. Cantwell says she agrees in principle with the House bill "and wants to see something pass sooner rather than later."

Despite a substantial reduction in deaths during the past two decades, the fishing industry still has the nation's highest worker-fatality rate. In recent years, fishermen died at a rate more than 25 times the national average for occupational deaths.

The Pacific Northwest and Alaska have some of the most treacherous fisheries, as exemplified in the death of 12 fishermen last year in the Bering Sea sinkings of the Seattle-based Alaska Ranger and Katmai fishing boats.

After lagging behind Europe in fishing-vessel-construction standards, the United States would, with the House legislation, vault to the international forefront of such regulation.

The bill has yet to encounter major opposition.

But that could change. Some marine-industry officials say the legislation overreaches by establishing expensive and unnecessary new building requirements for boats as small as 50 feet.

"It's going to save lives," Oberstar, the House committee chairman, said in an interview last week. "And you can't measure a life saved in dollars and cents. If you can't afford to operate safely, then you shouldn't operate."

Owners vs. reformers

The effort to improve fishing-fleet safety has for decades pitted independent-minded boat owners — wary of bureaucratic rules — against reformers.

A turning point came in 1988, when Congress passed the Fishing Vessel Safety Act. It included requirements for emergency locator beacons, survival suits for cold-water fishing and Coast Guard-approved life rafts. The law substantially improved the survival rates of fishermen who ended up in the water.

The biggest drops in deaths were in Alaska's fishing grounds, where the average annual death rate has dropped by more than 40 percent from the early 1990s, according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

Shifts in fishery management ended some of the derby-style competitions that prompted some fishermen to take big risks. Also, the Coast Guard in 1999 began a major effort to check Bering Sea crab boats to see if they were carrying unstable loads of pot traps, and the death rate plunged in king- and snow-crab harvests.

But last year the sinkings of the Alaska Ranger and the Katmai were sharp reminders of the perils that remain in the North Pacific fishing industry. Coast Guard safety recommendations, based upon investigations of these two vessels, are scheduled to be released this year, and will likely give new momentum to the congressional effort to enact tougher laws.

Key elements of the House bill include:

• Coast Guard safety inspections, which are now voluntary, would be required at least once every other year. Skippers would be required to undergo safety training.

• New commercial fishing boats that are at least 50 feet long and operate at least three miles offshore would be subject to extensive new construction and equipment-installation standards developed by maritime-classification societies. Each ship would need to come with a "stability letter" from these societies outlining safe operation.

• Older fishing vessels 50 feet or longer — as they reach the 25th anniversary of their launch — would come under alternative safety standards that would be in place by 2020. These standards would be patterned after an effort launched in the Northwest to improve safety in the head and gut fleet that harvests fish off Alaska.

Smaller boats at risk

The House bill's focus on boats as small as 50 feet long reflects Coast Guard risk analysis. Statistics compiled during a 15-year period that ended in 2007 found that vessels between 50 and 79 feet long had the highest loss rates in the entire fishing fleet. Yet current rules don't require any naval architects to approve the ships' construction or develop safe operating guidelines.

But tough construction standards for the smaller boats are a point of contention.

Jonathan Parrott, a Seattle naval architect with Jensen Maritime, said he supports requiring all new fishing vessels that are 50 feet or longer to have watertight construction of holds and a stability letter.

But he thinks that building the smaller boats to standards set by the marine-classification societies would increase construction expenses 10 to 15 percent. He said it would require costly documentation of equipment installation that would do little to boost safety, but a lot to discourage investment in new boats.

A representative of a classification group disagreed, and said the added costs would be much lower that Parrott's estimate.

"The safety improvements are real, and extending the classification requirements to smaller vessels can greatly reduce risk," said Blaine Collins, vice president of Det Norske Veritas, which classes fishing vessels in the United States.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com