Urgent MAIB warning following MOB fatality

Crewman found to have been pulled overboard due to inadvertent entanglement of creel leg rope in PFD lifting strop

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has issued a safety bulletin following the fatal accident onboard the 18.35m crabber Kingfisher DH 110 (FN, 25 July, ‘Fatal MOB from Dartmouth crabber’).

The bulletin urges the Home and Dry Safety Forum to immediately communicate through its members the need for owners and crew of potting vessels to review their deck working risk assessments.

The Kingfisher tragedy, which occurred 30nm east-north-east of Wick on 12 July this year, saw a deckhand become attached to the backrope and be pulled overboard while manually toggling on creels. The deckhand’s PFD automatically inflated, and he initially surfaced, leading the crew to believe he was clear of the backrope and floating freely.

However, the MAIB bulletin – the purpose of which is not to attribute fault or blame – states that when crew cut the backrope and manoeuvred the vessel to rescue the deckhand, he was found to be still attached to the gear, and had been pulled underwater by the fleet of creels.

Using the hauler, the backrope was retrieved and the deckhand recovered. Despite the efforts of the Kingfisher’s crew, RNLI lifeboat crew members, a paramedic from an HM Coastguard rescue helicopter and crew of an attending wind farm guard vessel, the deckhand could not be revived.

The ongoing investigation found that the compliant PFD worn by the deckhand had a red webbing lifting strop sewn onto the harness that hung freely below the stole, and that the leg rope of the last creel which had been shot away was threaded through the strop.

The bulletin says ‘this had connected the deckhand to the running backrope and caused him to be pulled overboard’. It adds: “It is probable that the deckhand had inadvertently passed the toggle on the creel’s leg rope through the red webbing strop while connecting the creel to the backrope.”

Noting that the benefit of wearing a PFD on deck to aid survival in a man-overboard incident is clear, the MAIB said the vessel’s crew had been wearing the supplied PFDs on the working deck for the previous two years – as was required in the onboard risk assessment.

However, the strop hanging on the front of the deckhand’s PFD harness ‘presented a risk of entanglement when working creels that had not been identified or mitigated by the risk assessment’.

The investigation found that some crew members had spotted the risk of entanglement and had cut the strop, but that this had ‘not resulted in a review of their working practices or risk assessments’. The bulletin says that had the crew’s concerns been raised more robustly, risks could have been re-evaluated.

The MAIB says that although the cutting of the strops removed the risk of entanglement, it created a new risk, as their PFDs no longer had the lifting strops necessary to recover them if they fell overboard. It says that as ‘unauthorised modification of a PFD can cause damage, render it inoperable and invalidate its certification’, this practice ‘must be avoided’.

The safety recommendations in the bulletin include ensuring that hazards associated with shooting and recovering creels are fully mitigated, and that when working-deck PFDs are provided, they must be of the required standard and appropriate for the work being undertaken.

The bulletin also recommends that when new hazards are identified, such as the risk of entanglement from loose lifting strops on PFDs, the information should be shared among crew and alternative PPE sourced as soon as possible.

The MAIB will publish a full report into the accident on completion of the investigation. The safety bulletin can be accessed at: bit.ly/4dSZRYU

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.

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