iFish5

The Lloyd’s Register Foundation is a global charity which has active grants in excess of £100 million. One of The Foundation’s missions is enhancement of the safety of life at sea. In its recent Insight Report on Global Safety Challenges, safety in the fishing industry was identified as one of the 12 main challenges facing mankind, alongside such fundamental issues as safety of the world’s food and water supplies. It is often stated that the annual death toll in the fishing industry is around 24,000.

A key driver in the Foundation’s grant awarding decisions is maximizing impact to society, regardless of location or method. In this case, impact will be measured in the number of fishers’ lives saved. A workshop was held 19-20 March 2018, during which industry experts:

• confirmed the locations where the largest numbers of fishers have lost, and without intervention will continue to lose, their lives,
• debated the causal factors which have costed the most lives (for example: inadequate access to affordable weather forecasting, unstable or otherwise unsuitable fishing boats, lack of crew-awareness of vessel stability, cultural aspects, human factors), and
• proposed specific solutions for further development and subsequent implementation.

The development and implementation of the proposed solutions will benefit from guidance and other participation by several organizations with whom the Foundation has recently discussed the related issues, including: FISH Safety Foundation, CHIRP, The Nautical Institute, The International Maritime Organization, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), The Fisheries and Marine Institute, MUN and The Pew Trust.

In addition, the Foundation can also utilize the expertise resident in its fee-earning branch, the Lloyd’s Register Group, which has more than 257 years of Marine-related experience.