April 9, 2025 — AMSEA, the Alaska Marine Safety and Education Association, has issued a Mayday call of its own as new funding cuts and reorganization under the Trump administration threaten to end safety training credited with saving lives.
“Almost all our funding comes from NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health),” says AMSEA executive director, Leann Cyr, Ph.D. “And NIOSH has been effectively dissolved and most its employees fired, including Jennifer Lincoln. (A 2021 National FishermanHighliner).” Pointing out that the number of fishermen deaths has steadily declined since AMSEA began conducting safety training courses, Cyr contends that cutting the program will inevitably cost lives. “When AMSEA’s commercial fishing safety program began in 1985, 250 fishing vessels and 75 fishermen’s lives were lost each year,” she says in an AMSEA blog.“Forty years later, with hundreds to thousands trained annually by AMSEA in marine safety and survival, in collaboration with dedicated USCG efforts, fatalities have been lowered by over 80 percent. Vessels still experience many capsizes and vessel disasters; however, fishermen now survive these emergencies daily.
“It was a dark time in Alaska before this training,” says Cyr. “And we don’t want to go back there. Teaching people how to get into a survival suit in under 60 seconds, how to get into a life raft, make a MayDay call, and other emergency preparedness skills has obviously saved lives.”
When the crew of the groundfish trawler Three Girlsabandoned shipin August 2024,100 miles east of New Hampshire, they had recently been through a safety training that enabled them to get off in good order and be rescued promptly, saving the Coast Guard considerable time and money. “Right now, we have funding for our Alaska programs until July 1,” says Cyr. “And funding for national programs until September 1. After that, these trainings will go away.”