April 1, 2019 — Life jackets save lives. That’s the simple message that Lifejackets for Lobstermen is trying to spread across port cities in Massachusetts and Maine.
The message may seem intuitive, but according to statistics from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, it’s not.
From 2010-14, lobster fishing deaths ranked the highest in occupational fatalities in East Coast Fisheries and in 80 percent of those deaths, from either falls overboard or vessel disasters, none of the recovered victims was wearing a life jacket.
In response to this trend, the Northeast Center for Occupational Health and Safety: Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing (NEC) used a grant from NIOSH to work with 181 lobstermen in Massachusetts and Maine to find out what they could do to increase life jacket use.
They gave the lobstermen one of nine different styles of life jacket at random and asked them to use it for a month and share their input on things like comfort and their ability to work while wearing it.
The study and the feedback they received led to their project Lifejackets for Lobstermen.