Occupational Injuries and Fatalities in Norwegian Fish Farming

People working in the Norwegian fish farming industry work in a high energy environment, where there are many hazards in the daily work. An important part of mitigating hazardous situations is to keep track of the characteristics of the accidents that have already happened and to learn from these, when planning future work. The objective of this study was to strengthen the knowledge of factors and conditions influencing personnel safety in Norwegian fish farming, based on analyses of registered occupational fatalities and injuries.

We gathered reported injuries and fatalities from vessels and fish farms from three different registries. Two of these are based on mandatory reporting to authorities, and one is a privately maintained registry. The accidents from the three registries are analyzed separately, and different types of characteristics are presented.

The results demonstrate that fall and crush/impact are the most common types of accidents both on vessels and fish farms. Other characteristics described are the type of vessels involved and during which type of operations injuries happened. During the last 10 years, fatalities have happened mainly in relation to lifting and maintenance operations. The reported accidents are discussed in relation to the quality of accident reports, the development in the industry towards more specialized and outsourced operations, and it points to some of the major challenges that the industry faces when planning for safe working places and operations.

This overview can be used in the fish farming industry as a basis for going into further details about how accident prevention should be planned.