Near Miss Fishing vl No Lookout
Close Encounter with a Fishing Boat - West Coast of N. America, Calm, cloudless, almost full moon..
- Report No. 93021.
On the bridge were the pilot, pilot examiner, apprentice pilot, master, second mate and helmsman. The local traffic VTS were monitoring us. We had taken the longer route round to avoid the largest concentrations of fishermen. The fishing is carried out with drift nets up to 500m long which should have a light on the end of them, most of them did. We were monitoring the local VHF Channel as well as Channel 16 and the pilot occasionally switched to Channel 71 to contact fishing vessels. We contacted a fishing vessel 6 miles off on our port bow who had very bright lights. We received a reply from a boat who said he was just west of ........Island, he said he had nets out stretching 0.25 miles between him and the Island, it was mutually agreed that we would pass west of him (keep him to port). We had informed the VTS earlier that we would be on manoeuvring speed because of the fishing traffic, the examiner pilot pointed out that it was important to broadcast this, as all VHF conversations were taped and could be used as evidence that we were proceeding at a safe speed.
he situation seemed to be perfectly under control. However, when we were about three ships lengths from the fishing boat he started to proceed in a westerly direction across our bow. Because we had previously had clear communication with him, nobody expected him to continue on this course but he kept coming. A first long blast on the whistle had no effect, nor did a second. He was by then about one ships length on our port bow and still crossing. The examiner ordered hard to port, but before the order could be executed the fishing boat had turned hard to starboard and the captain ordered the helmsman to go hard to starboard. The fishing boat passed 20m down our port side, our course had hardly changed by then which illustrates that there is not much that you can do at such a late stage.
How could this have happened? Our guess is that the fisherman did not see us because of his bright lights and was preoccupied with fishing. The captain said afterwards that he would never have gone to port, and would have rather made a round turn to starboard if necessary rather than try to go to port. The solution seems quite simple, don't come too close, unfortunately this means that you would sometimes have to anchor until they stopped fishing. In this case it looked quite safe to pass because of the previous VHF communication with the boat, in fact the VHF communication was the cause of the close situation. It shows how very careful we must be with the use of VHF in such circumstances.
From this report it would appear that the captain was justified in this case in countermanding the pilots order to go to port, if this action had been carried out, it would undoubtedly have led to a collision. It seems that positive identification had been made with the fishing boat and it is difficult to understand why he started steaming to the west when it had been agreed that the ship would pass west of the fishing boat.
This report, and that in MARS 93020, were not submitted through the normal channels of MARS but were submitted to the NI pilotage certificate scheme by the second mate who experienced them. The above incident where the ship was taken into the wrong traffic lane was a dangerous manoeuvre. There were several other options open to the pilot, such as slowing down , or again altering course to starboard and going out of the traffic lane. It would appear that this was a good case for the master to question the pilots actions.