Ergonomic evaluation in a case study on the behavior of purse seine fishing vessel workers

In this study, we examined the purse seine (net) fishing method in Japan, which is known to have one of the highest accident rates in the fishing industry. In fact, the accident rate among fishermen in Japan is 8 times higher than that for workers in all other industries. It has been found that many fishery work accidents are related to the poor-ergonomics of the working environment. It is obvious that due to the large number of people on board and the constant motion of being at sea, working on a fishing vessel is extremely difficult. We believe that experience and technology can combine to ameliorate this great difficulty. In these analyses, specific aspects of working as a fisherman will be clarified. The work posture will be analyzed at the same time. To this end, we recorded and then analyzed the movements of workers on board a purse seine fishing vessel. As a result, we found that there were considerable differences in cycle times for various work activities. We know that from an ergonomic point of view, this can be a particularly dangerous factor impacting these fishermen's health. To analyze this factor, we evaluated the working posture of the fishermen using a pain index. For example, the value of the pain index number was greater than 4 for the worker operating two machines on an 80 GT net fishing vessel. We also discussed the relevance of these ergonomic factors to the working conditions in other fisheries.