AMSA provides lessons learned from an incident during which a crew’s foot was trapped in a cray’s pot’s rope, and was dragged over the side.
The incident
After leaving port at 0627 on 6 October 2022, a Class 3C fishing vessel prepared to deploy its cray pots. A crewmember lifted the pot and placed it on the vessel’s aft port side gunwhale rail, ready to deploy, as did another crewmember on the aft starboard side.
Both crew members were wearing inflatable lifejackets. The master sounded the vessel’s horn to signal the correct place to drop the pots. The port side crewmember’s foot became entangled in the pot rope and they were dragged overboard.
The starboard side crewmember raised the person overboard alarm, and the master immediately put the engine astern to stop the vessel. The master looked out the wheelhouse’s port window and saw the PoB take a last breath before being pulled underwater.
The master immediately instructed the starboard side crewmember to put the pot rope into the pot winch and start winching slowly.
As soon as the PoB was winched as far as the pot tipper and out of the water, the master ran down from the bridge and grabbed the PoB to support them while the crewmember deployed the person overboard portable ladder over the side and grabbed the person overboard knife.
The crewmember climbed over the side and cut away the pot rope.
The PoB was assisted into the vessel and given first aid. On returning to port, the PoB was taken to the hospital for overnight observation and treatment for water in the lungs.
Lessons learned
The investigation identified the following contributory factors:
- The master and crew had identified the person overboard hazards and accompanying risks. They had assessed the risks and included within their safety management system emergency procedures for different scenarios of a person overboard.
- The crew conducted regular person-overboard emergency drills during the season, including actions when a person went overboard due to rope entanglement during pot setting. They had a knife stored next to the pot winch for emergency use and a person overboard ladder stored close by and readily accessible.
Lessons learned
This hazard situation was readily identified by the master and crew as a real possibility given the nature of their pot-setting tasks.
They assessed the risks and how to minimize them, agreed on the appropriate crew numbers for the vessel operation, and updated the vessel’s safety management system’s emergency preparedness procedures.
Because the emergency procedures had been regularly drilled, the crew were experienced, wearing lifejackets and the person overboard was saved quickly and was relatively unharmed.
