It’s time for the Discovery Channel to either rename its reality television series about commercial fishing or change the setting. Turns out Deadliest Catch is a title better suited to a reality series about the Northeast groundfish fishery than it is Alaskan king crabbing.
Groundfishermen in the Northeast suffer the highest death rate among commercial fishermen, according to a study recently published by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Twenty-six of 4,340 full-time groundfishermen died on the job between 2000 and 2009, the study found. The dubious honor of second-deadliest catch goes to Atlantic scalloping. Forty-four of 10,384 scallop fishermen lost their lives at sea during that same decade. By comparison, twelve of 4,658 Alaskan crab fishermen were killed.
The findings don’t surprise Captain Dave Haggerty of Harpswell, whose big catches have earned him the title of the “Haddock King” among his peers in the Northeast groundfishery. “I can’t speak to Alaskan crab fishing because I’ve never been there,” says Haggerty, who skippers the eighty-five-foot trawler Harmony out of Portland, “but I’d guess the two regions are equally bad in winter. The icing situations here are very dangerous.” In 2007, the New Bedford dragger Lady of Grace capsized in Nantucket Sound from the heavy weight of the ice that encased its deck and rigging. “All hands were lost,” Haggerty says.
Read the complete opinion piece from Down East.