Canada: Safety culture continuing to grow in lobster fishery

Safety consciousness in Nova Scotia’s fishing industry continues to be cultivated and strengthened. “Not only is it a good sign that you have more fishers signing up for non-mandatory safety training like the Wheelhouse Safety Logbook Tutorial, and when you talk to captains there are more doing preseason safety meetings with their crews, but we also are seeing more PFDs on the vessels and wharves we visit,” says Dylan Buchanan, executive director of Fish Safe NS. The tutorial for the Wheelhouse Safety Logbook was developed while working with the Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council, says Buchanan. “When Transport Canada announced last November they would be taking up the safety board’s recommendations to confirm safety drills on boats during inspections, what ended up happening is there became a very big demand to use the safety logbook as a way to document all the drills and stuff,” Buchanan says. “As a result, we created a tutorial around the safety logbook just to help people ...