Sea Safety No 4 (February 2008)

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Number 4 (February 2008)

PDF: 4.3 MB

Editor

Steve Beverly

Production

Pacific Community, Fisheries Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems Division, Information Section, SPC, BP D5, 98848 Noumea Cedex, New Caledonia.

Produced with financial assistance from France.

Editorial

All you want to know about marine radios and other things

It has been longer than a year since the last issue of the Sea Safety Information Bulletin (SIG Bulletin #3) was printed and distributed. Many of you have undoubtedly been waiting patiently for news of sea safety in the Pacific. We are also waiting … for contributions from you, the readers. In that last issue the editor, Hugh Walton, urged “group” members and readers to “sharpen their pencils or sit down at their keyboards and send in safety-related stories and articles”. Unfortunately, not much material was sent to Mr Walton’s desk. And just who are the group members that he was referring to? As it turns out, we are way too few. The group consists largely of the editor and a few contributors, including the staff of SPC’s Coastal Fisheries Programme, the very ones who produce the Sea Safety Bulletin.

The wish of having sea-safety-related news and stories pouring in from around the Pacific and elsewhere never came to fruition. Even so, we are producing the fourth issue of the bulletin - with new aspirations and a new approach. The staff of SPC’s Nearshore Fisheries Development and Training Section will take over editorial functions and will also remain the root of the sea safety awareness group and continue to be the main contributors, at least for now. For the most part the reports on SPC activities, safety features, training activities, technology and safety, resource materials, and accident and incident reports will come from our small group. We will still rely on others for news from other places and reader contributions. Since we are in a sense reviving the bulletin after a brief hiatus we ask you to be patient when examining our efforts, just as we have been patient waiting for your stories – and we still urge you to sharpen your pencils

Among my other duties as Fisheries Development Officer for the Nearshore Fisheries Development and Training Section, I will be editing at least the next two Sea Safety Information Bulletins, numbers 4 and 5. For the current issue I have had to rely mostly on two sources for content – myself and the Internet. I ask you to bear with me while I present my own ramblings – one a story on sea safety in the Cook Islands, and the other an article on tricks of the trade. I make no apologies, however, for relying on the Internet and have included under the “Resource Materials” section a report called “Surfing the Net for sea safety” that has links to many interesting sites. I urge you to click on as many of these as you can and to do your own searches as well.

I found Maritime New Zealand on the Internet and they have kindly allowed us to use some of their materials in this issue. You will find excerpts from their Radio Handbook for Coastal Vessels, tips about boating safety, and a simple guide to making radio distress calls. My thanks go to Maritime New Zealand for sharing this vital information in the interest of safety at sea for all.

Steve Beverly

Contents

  • Radio handbook for coastal vessels
  • Canoe building workshop in Nauru
  • Safety night at the movies
  • Some inventive tricks of the trade that could save you money, save your vessel, or save your life
  • Surfing the Net for sea safety information
  • Tips about boating safety
  • Safety at sea in the Cook Islands
  • After Solomon Islands, seven miraculous survivors in Papua New Guinea
  • Fishermen adrift in Pacific drank shark blood to survive
  • Sea safety awareness project in Tamil Nadu, India
  • FishSAFE New Zealand