Fishing Skippers' Perceptions of Integrated Electronic Marine Systems

Abstract

Integrated electronic marine systems are becoming part of the numerous screens which are to be found on ships' bridges and in wheelhouses of fishing vessels. This paper continues previous work which has focussed on perceived safety aspects of integrated electronic marine systems, in particular, a small study completed within the last two years which showed that some fishing skippers had negative perceptions of integrated electronic marine systems. This present study uses semi-structured interviews with skippers in the United Kingdom fishing fleet to show that integrated electronic marine systems can be perceived as increasing safety as well as being of good value in terms of need and cost. It is possible that such perceptions are dependent on experiencing the use of integrated electronic marine systems within offshore trawling.1. Integrated systems. 2. marine electronic aids. 3. pelagic trawling. 4. users' perceptions.

Watch-Keeping on Fishing Vessels: Can Electronic Marine Systems Help?

“…It has been noted previously, for example, in Mills (2008), that the United Kingdom has only a small number of ports which accommodate large fishing vessels, most notably Newlyn in Cornwall, and Peterhead and Fraserburgh, both in North East Scotland. However, Lerwick, in the Shetland Isles, also is a large registering port for fishing vessels and can boast of being the home of a range of vessels of 70 metres or more LOA.…”

“…It has been previously noted (for example, in Mills, 2008) that fishing skippers dislike paperwork and have a healthy wariness of strangers asking questions, the answers to which can be traced back to themselves. For this reason, semi-structured interviews (Faulkner, 2000) have been used which do not require any personal details about the respondents except that they are holders of a Class 1 Fishing Skipper's Certificate (or a ‘full ticket’ in fishing parlance).…”

“…The questions used built on previous work, in particular, that in Mills (2008) in that they focused on the safety enhancing aspects of electronic marine systems (EMS). However, previous work (Mills, 2008 and Mills 2007) only asked general questions about the perceptions of whether EMS enhanced safety, leaving the skippers to give examples to support their positive or negative answers. This study focuses specifically on keeping watch and avoiding collisions and groundings, both of which are serious consequences of poor watch-keeping.…”

“…The questions focused on aspects of general safety of EMS and IEMS, rather than only on IEMS as in previous work (Mills, 2008 and Mills, 2007) but then diverged further from that previous work to focus on the usage of IEMS and other technologies for enhancing the safety aspects of watch-keeping. This included screen switching within a multi-functional navigation system as well as questions about other systems which could be used to enhance safety.…”

“…The electronic chart, radar and GPS may well be integrated along with other information such as that from the fishing aids and echo-sounder so that all the information is displayed on one screen, in which case the system is referred to as an Integrated Electronic Marine System (IEMS). The concept of an IEMS for fishing has existed for over 20 years (Stoop, 1990) but its place as an aid to watch-keeping has not been investigated beyond a part of a cursory study in 2007 (Mills, 2008). In addition to the systems already mentioned, most fishing vessels also carry an Automatic Identification System (AIS) and, if demersal (seabed) trawling, then a seabed viewing system may also be utilised.…”