It’s no secret that women work in all parts of New England’s fisheries. Whether as captains of their own vessels, business owners, directors of fisheries research and advocacy organizations, or in resource management, women make up a sizeable segment of the sector.
Ann Backus with Maine Seacoast Mission Captain Mike Johnson at the
Fishermen's Forum. MSM photo.
Ann Backus is one of those women. For more than thirty years she has worked to ensure that fishermen remain safe while fishing and healthy while at home. Currently, she is director of outreach at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University where she focuses on occupational safety and environmental health. She is also one of the founding members of Maine’s Commercial Fishing Safety Council.
Backus, who learned to sail as a child and taught sailing during the summer in Massachusetts, was drawn into the fishing world when she led a School of Public Health Visiting Scholars’ retreat in Camden in the 1990s. Participants came to Camden to meet Jeff Ciampa, a civilian employee of the Coast Guard in Maine.
“He came up and gave a talk on injuries that fishermen suffer and safety issues. I told him he should be a visiting scholar too, which he subsequently became,” Backus recalled. With funding from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Ciampas, Backus and a third researcher conducted a project on how lobstermen get entangled in trap rope while at sea.
“We did a survey of lobstermen. We went up and down the coast [of Maine], stopping in coffee shops or going out on boats to talk to lobstermen,” Backus said. “I went to Commercial Fisheries News and said that we’d like to publicize the survey in the paper, which they did. The editor then asked me to write a column on safety for each issue, so in February 2004 I started writing 'Fish Safe.'" Backus marks the 20th anniversary of her health and safety column this month.
The rope entanglement survey findings were later published by NIOSH. Backus took those findings and translated them into a series of large safety posters illustrating different methods of preventing rope entanglements while lobstering. She also connected with Plant Buoy Sticks, a company that makes fishing equipment and accessories, to make knife sheaths that fishermen could attach to oilskins. “Having a knife easily accessible is critical. We also encouraged fishermen to have a knife taped somewhere at the stern and on the hauling side,” she said.
Lobstermen face safety issues not only while fishing but also while on shore.
Some years after her survey project, Backus began an environmental health study on Vinalhaven. “I had talked with the doctor out there earlier, asking what medical issues he was seeing frequently among fishermen. He said they had respiratory issues during the winter months but it wasn’t a cold or flu.”
Backus and a group of environmental exposure assessment researchers went to Vinalhaven to discover what mystery illness was afflicting only fishermen. They spent time with lobstermen in their boat shops while they worked on their Styrofoam buoys in preparation for the lobster season. The researchers measured the air where the men worked and found that sanding and heat branding threw a huge amount of particulates into the air. The paint used on buoys emitted high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC), which caused respiratory problems as well.
“Plastic buoys came in soon after,” Backus said. “And we pushed for use of latex paint rather than high VOC paint.” Sherwin Williams offers a low VOC paint that is resistant to UV rays and salt. According to Backus, Hamilton Marine is now producing its own line of low VOC paint for use on buoys.
“Our most important recent work is encouraging the use of damage control kits on boats,” Backus said. Damage control kits contain the tools and materials needed to make important repairs to the boat while at sea, items like clamps, plugs, wrenches, fiberglass wrap, even a pump. “It all comes in a bucket with instructions on how to fix things, like a fuel or water leak.” Such a kit is not required by the Coast Guard. Redde Marine Safety Systems in Stonington carries pre-packaged kits; Backus says one can be put together for less than $300.
“For young people, the lobster apprenticeship program is supposed to help with learning how to deal with emergencies but that teaching is dependent on who the person’s mentor is,” Backus said. “This is a just another way to be safe while fishing.”
That is what Ann Backus has been doing nearly every day – discovering another way to keep lobstermen safe and healthy on the water and at home.
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