This morning I caught an interview on BBC Breakfast between a BBC journalist and a trawlerman. The item was about the high number of trawlermen who die at sea each year.
Looking down at the boat our Journalist says, “There are a lot of ropes and machinery down there, it must be easy to slip up.”
Replies the trawlerman, and I’m paraphrasing from memory: “Slipping up on deck is the least of our worries. Most men can keep their feet at sea. What’s worse is if the net snags on rocks. If the cable doesn’t break it can have the whole boat over.”
“What can be done to improve safety?”
“Very little. The job is dangerous by nature. However, as just one example, they brought out this ridiculous regulation that set stricter quotas on boats over ten meters in length than on smaller boats. So now there are a lot more small boats than there used to be, and these are more dangerous.”