First District
Prevention Division
Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety
About the Fishing Vessel Safety Program: The First Coast Guard District has approximately 20,000 fishing vessels operating in its waters. Our approach to implementing fishing vessel regulations has focused primarily on communication and education. We have four, dedicated, civilian billets at each of our Marine Safety Offices to augment the military personnel, and we are actively engaged in integrating the Coast Guard Auxiliary and reserves into the safety program to facilitate servicing the industry.
We collect and analyze casualty statistics on fishing vessel casualties within the district to target our safety efforts at the most significant risks.
The heart of our enforcement program is the voluntary dockside examination. The dockside examination program involves a non-threatening, non-adversarial inspection by qualified Coast Guard individuals to help fishermen bring their vessels into full compliance with all federal regulations. The examination is strictly for the benefit of the fishermen and can not lead to any punitive action. Contact the nearest dockside examiner for more information.
We continue to have a presence at industry forums and provide speakers and individual instruction for any fisherman that wants assistance. We are committed to ensuring all of our personnel and customers are on the same wavelength, both philosophically and fundamentally, in our enforcement posture.
Links:
Read the Report of the Fishing Vessel Safety Task Force. On Tuesday, April 6 the final report of the Fishing Vessel Casualty Task Force was released at Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City, N.J. The Task Force was assembled in January as a result of a number of fishing vessel accidents since the beginning of 1999, and to examine the effectiveness of existing Coast Guard safety programs aimed at reducing the high death rate in the commercial fishing industry.
- "A Best Practices Guide to Vessel Stability" (pdf file, 634KB) was jointly prepared by the United States Coast Guard and the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Advisory Committee and offers fishermen an introduction to stability and recommendations for avoiding stability impairing scenarios that are encountered during day to day operations.
- Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Act of 1988
- Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Advisory Committee
- National Coast Guard Safety Alerts
- Coast Guard Navigation and Vessel Information Circulars
- National Marine Fisheries Service: Fisheries Statistics & Economics
- Commercial Fishing Safety Digest
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Federal Requirements for Commercial Fishing Industry Vessels Pamphlet
Safety Alerts
Safety Alerts are intended to provide "Lessons Learned" to the commercial fishing industry. A full listing of Safety Alerts is available on the following website: http://uscg.mil/hq/g-m/cf\fvs/index.htm
Partial list of Safety Alerts in English, Italian and Portuguese:
Fish Safe Info:
The attached files are part of the series of one page articles/fliers containing useful information for all industry stakeholders and fishermen. They are now also posted at the Homeport portal www.FishSafe.info
Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF)
Excel
MS Word