Commercial Dungeness crab fishing on the West Coast is one of the highest risk occupations in the United States, based on fatality rates. But non-fatal injuries in the fishery appear to go largely unreported, a new study from Oregon State University shows.

While the fatality rates in the Dungeness crab fleet have been reported in the past, the incidence of non-fatal injuries have not been previously studied, said Laurel Kincl, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health and safety in the OSU College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

“The commercial Dungeness fishing fleet, which operates along the coast of Oregon, Washington and Northern California, is a vital economic commodity,” she said. “Injuries can be life-threatening and life-altering, leading to disability, decreased quality of life and lost wages.”

Understanding the type and nature of fatalities and injuries, including describing and categorizing the types of injuries, is the first step in identifying safety issues and pinpointing areas for prevention, she said.

The fatality rate among Dungeness crab fishermen is several times higher than the national rate for commercial fishing. But the injury rate among Dungeness fishermen is much lower than injury rates in other commercial fishing fleets that have been studied. Kincl believes underreporting may be to blame.

Her team’s findings, published in the latest issue of the journal International Maritime Health , are the first step to better understanding fishing injuries among Dungeness crab fishermen. The research is part of an OSU-led research project to identify and reduce the risks of injuries in the industry, Kincl said.

The research is part of a new Fishermen Led Injury Prevention Program (FLIPP), designed to take a fresh approach to fishing industry injury prevention by working with commercial Dungeness crab fishermen to identify and reduce injury risks. The project is supported by a three-year, $825,000 grant from the National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health. Kincl is the principal investigator.

In the project’s next phase, Kelsey Miller, Oregon Sea Grant’s new Newport-based Fisheries Extension faculty research assistant, is helping Kincl and her colleagues set up focus groups of fishermen along the Oregon coast and conduct fishing crew surveys to find out more about how they get hurt on the job and what they are doing  to prevent injuries.

By the end of the project, researchers hope to come up with and test interventions that could help reduce injuries among crab fishermen.

“We want to identify some things that might work, but we don’t want to tell them what to do,” Kincl said. “We want to let them decide what would be most helpful.”

Learn more:

• Read the complete news release from OSU News & Research Communications
• Follow Oregon Sea Grant’s Fisheries Extension team on Facebook