A Scots seafood firm has been fined £80,000 after a fisherman drowned when his leg was caught in a rope and he was pulled overboard.
Bosses at Scrabster Seafoods Limited pled guilty to health and safety breaches at Tain Sheriff Court earlier today, Wednesday, June 7.
The court heard that if the Thurso-based company had updated its risk assessment and put proper safety procedures in place, Mark Elder may possibly still be alive today.
The prosecutor told the court that on February 5, 2018 the North Star (WK673), a fishing vessel, was deploying creel around 16 miles north-west of Cape Wrath.
Three men, including Elder, 26, were working together at a table to manually launch creel out of a “shooting window” by attaching the creel to a rope that was being released from the boat.
Elder, a former student of Thurso High School and North Highland College, became caught in a coil of back rope and, despite the efforts of his crewmates, was pulled overboard.
It took around 10 minutes for him to be brought back onboard. Efforts to resuscitate him continued for over an hour but he passes away on the vessel.
The investigation by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency found the directors of Scrabster Seafoods Limited had no experience of operating and managing fishing vessels, and when they purchased the boat in November 2016 they failed to arrange or complete the required new risk assessment.
The directors had no in-depth knowledge of the responsibilities and obligations that accompanied owning a fishing vessel and had relied on the skipper to ‘keep them right’ in respect of the their legal responsibilities regarding health and safety. The skipper’s position was that he was unaware of the 1997 Regulations requirement to review and update any risk assessments.
Court heard how after the vessel’s change of ownership, it underwent an extensive refit in August 2017 where modifications were made to the working deck.
The change of ownership, the relocation of the creel hauler and the subsequent changes in the method of hauling and storing the ground ropes should have resulted in new risk assessments taking place.
Serious injury or death is most likely to occur during this type of fishing when a person becomes snagged in a rope. Wooden planks called "pond boards” are recommended to create barriers to keep workers clear of ropes.
Their use on the working deck would have given Scrabster Seafoods a way of providing a safe system of work for the vessel’s crew, however they were not in place.
Speaking after the sentencing, Debbie Carroll, who leads on health and safety investigations for the COPFS, said: "Scrabster Seafoods Limited accepted liability and the Crown accepted their guilty plea to the contraventions of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
“Mark Elder lost his life in circumstances which were foreseeable and entirely avoidable. Had the required risk assessments been carried out and safe systems of work been put in place then Mr Elder may well be alive today.
“Hopefully this incident should prompt other employers to consider their duties and that failing to keep their employees safe can have fatal consequences for which they will be held accountable.”
Tributes were paid to Elder, known affectionately as 'Yank', following his death, with one friend describing him as "a great young lad taken too soon".
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