Life-saving lessons: Man Overboard training
More than 90% of fishermen at Man Overboard training reported a positive change in behaviour around wearing PFDs while working on deck.
What challenge did the industry face?
Commercial fishing remains one of the UK’s most hazardous industries, and falling overboard is the single biggest cause of workplace fatalities in the fishing sector. Over the past 10 years, 126 reports of MOB occurrences from UK fishing vessels have been reported to the MAIB with 26 of these resulting in fatalities.
Preventing Man Overboard incidents mean practical awareness, good safety behaviours, regular drills and crew’s confidence in using life-saving equipment. For many fishermen, the most powerful way to understand the risk is to experience the challenge of being in the water in a safe, controlled environment.
How did Seafish and its partners respond?
We deliver funded Man Overboard Awareness events for commercial fishermen at specialist environmental training pools across the UK. The sessions use wind, rain and waves to create realistic conditions, helping participants understand how difficult a man overboard situation can be.
The one-day events cover the causes of falling overboard, how to reduce the risk and what can improve chances of survival. Participants enter the pool wearing clothes and oilskins, with and without a personal flotation device, practise climbing into a life raft, and use lines, tyres and ladders to simulate recovery from the water.
The training sits alongside Seafish’s wider safety work for the catching sector, including mandatory safety training administration, refresher training, voluntary safety initiatives and work with the Home and Dry Safety Forum and regional safety forums.
What was the impact?
The training gives fishermen direct, memorable experience of the risks of falling overboard and the difference that wearing a personal flotation device can make. Feedback from previous events shows that more than 90% of attendees at Man Overboard training reported a positive change in behaviour around wearing PFDs while working on deck.
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