As a cantankerous old man with a penchant for having a bite worse than my bark, I may have something against fishing boats.
I like the stuff they catch, and even the stuff they are allowed to land, EU permitting, but have you ever seen them make an effort to get out of your way, even when they are not fishing?
Life on a trawler is rough, but having an extra man in the wheelhouse to make sure it’s not getting in the way of a high bowed freighter wouldn’t hurt.
As for some of the fools in the far east. They almost deliberately try and get as close to your bow as you make frenzied efforts to keep out of their way.
The rule of the road for shipping was written for everyone, and that means fishing boats too. Yes, when they trawl and are hampered by the nets it’s best to stay out of the way, but when you find yourself in the midst of a swarm of thousands of little boats all with long drift nets behind them, it is often too late. Zig zagging a product tanker every five minutes in the bright blue seas of the Gulf of Thailand leaves more frustrated local fishermen waving their fists at the bridge and the bemused officers who can only wonder where on earth all the little wooden boats came from in the first place.
But off the European coast it seems the fishermen can’t get it right. There’s often no one on the bridge keeping watch, and I know of one instance were they lad who was could hardly work the radio anyway.
But though I hated them in my seadog days, ever getting in my way, I understand that like us they are tired and overworked, and even more prone to falling overboard, alas.
But as we all love our fish – with chips in England, pickled in Scandinavia, in a Paella in Spain – so we demand more from these farmers of the sea. We are of course plundering the seas as the planet becomes home to ever more hungry human mouths to feed, mouths with ever more discernible palettes, but that’s another rant.
Now, I know fishing is not the same as managing a fleet of boxships, or running the chartering operations of a dozen panamax bulkers, but it all falls under the same dependence on there being seas on this planet.
So pass these words down you chain of responsibility. Getting those flat screen TVs to Felixstowe or that crude oil to Cherbourg in time to meet the charterers’ demands is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean you don’t stop when the guy who has been trying to get your dinner onto your table has fallen overboard, or his fishing boat is sinking in a storm.
Sure I may not like the fishermen when they get under my bow, especially when I see someone scampering up to the wheelhouse off the deck to alter course, but I sure as hell would help them if they got into trouble, and so should you.
One Comment
Well Captain, articles like yours are needed to open the eyes of the people who have never worked onboard a ship and especially a bridge and make irrational demands and absurd comments on how to maneuver (and not only) to the ship’s crew.
First I have to say from my experience as a mere second mate onboard Product Tankers and LNG Carriers with fishing vessels, has been the worst just by the fact that we risk our carreers and our licences in order to earn our salary just like fishermen do but on the way doing it, they change the colour of our hair in 6 months from black to white and believe me it’s not because of the paint thinners.
A trend that starts to expand along the South China Sea is the use of fishing boats, the shape of which looks kind of like the half of a nut but their size barely fits a small built person and their catch. They are deployed from a mother ship which is usually a trawler like vessel and we keep at least a mile distance a mere wave from a 285 meters vessel crusing with 21 knots can capsize them fairly easy.
On one ship the Master after a collission that happened due to fault of the fishing boat with a sister vessel, told us to treat them as Not Under Command and keep when practicable minimum 0,5 nautical miles ( in very heavy traffic) to maximum indicated 2 n.m. and that because of the fear of having to deal with the sudden course alterations at the last moment from the fishing boats. Also this classic pattern of behaviour of the fishing vessels of the fishing vessels has been interpreted by colleagues as a desperate attempt to make the cargo ships alter their course in order to avoid going through their nets, but I must ask you is it worth it for all the trouble we go through.
Again there are times when fishing vessels of the coast of Portugal did crazy stunts by altering their course at 0,2 n.m. C.P.A. from our bow and then mocking us straight to our faces via the VHF by calling us cowards and stuff
. They must understand the pressure we go through with all this paperwork, job stress, vessel and cargo monitoring we go through especially if you take into account that in membrane LNG carriers you cannot do sudden evasive maneuvers which exceed 10 degrees R.O.T. due to the fact that the cargo will start sloshing and when LNG is hitting violently the tanks, bad things may occur…
The conclusion to my response is that fishing boats should be always compliant with COLREGS when it comes to light exhibition depending on their operation, and they should put lightbuoys on their nets and not just plastic cans or anything similar.