ALASKA MARINE SAFETY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Did you participate in the United Fishermen of Alaska webinar yesterday, on updates to Alaska's Mandate 17: Protective Measures for Independent Commercial Fishing Vessels? If you missed it, you can watch a recording of the webinar here. Day fishermen and set net fishermen in particular, will want to watch the recording, as the discussion covered Appendix 3 to . That's the part of Mandate 17 that covers those operations. Lots of other topics were covered as well, like the state's travel and quarantine requirements, what to do if a crew member gets sick, and crew interactions with local communities. Everyone seems to have questions about how the mandates are supposed to work, so the webinar

Alaskan and former commercial fishermen, Jennifer Pickett, PhD, wants to know how you feel about working in Alaska's commercial fisheries during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Pickett does post-doctoral research in the Department of Psychology & Education at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She conducts scientific research on work and organizational psychology. Pickett hopes to identify the concerns of commercial fishermen and seasonal seafood processors returning to Alaska for work during this unprecedented period. Participant's responses will be entirely confidential. To participate in the 15-20 minute survey, click this link: http://vubpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5dsMpBNtFwSffsV. A rec

U.S. Coast Guard command center crews in the Northeast states have a new way to locate vessels in distress.

As commercial fishing boat captains and crews prepare for Alaska's pending salmon season, they confront new complications imposed by the state's Mandate 17: Protective Measures for Independent Commercial Fishing Vessels. The mandate requires commercial fishing vessel operators to develop and implement mitigation plans designed to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 within the fleet and to Alaska's remote, rural communities. Vessel operators' plans must address a required fourteen-day self-quarantine of crew traveling from out of state, minimizing contact with other vessels and communities, sanitation protocols, and the quarantine and transport of any crew that may fall ill. National Fisherm

You have finished your boat and gear work. The boat is fueled and iced. You have groceries and crew aboard and you are ready to slip the lines and head to work. Right? Take a look. Are your crew wearing a personal flotation device (PFD) on deck? Increasingly, commercial fishing captains are requiring their crew to wear PFDs on deck and for good reason: PFDs save lives. Consider an incident from January 2018. Two commercial fishermen aboard the trawler, F/V Arctic Wind, were swept overboard by a wave in the Bering Sea. Both men were wearing PFDs and both were recovered alive within fifteen minutes. “Well,” you might say, “I don’t fish in the Bering Sea in January or conditions nearly that sev