Crab fishing in Alaska ranks as the most dangerous job in the United States; and although new laws and regulations have made the occupation safer than it was three decades ago, it still surpasses mining and logging as the deadliest job in the U.S. Can you imagine working with cranes and hydraulics on a pitching, rolling boat in heavy seas? Add a 700 lb. (317.5 kg) crab pot with a long line tied to it, and you don’t know whether to look up, look down, or hang on for the ride. Danger might come from any direction. Since most crab fishing takes place in the winter, the temperature often drops below freezing, and ice forms on the decks, rails, and gear, making everything heavier and more slippery. A crew member who is seriously injured must often wait hours or days to reach advanced medical care, and a broken bone can become a death sentence.

In the mid-1970s, the death rate for commercial fishermen soared to seventy-five times the U.S. national average for fatalities on the job, and the mortality rate for crab fishing in Alaska in the winter peaked twenty-five times higher than the death toll for the rest of the commercial fishing industry.  According to statistics, it was nine times more dangerous for an individual to take a job crab fishing in Alaska than it was for him to become a miner or logger, the two next most hazardous jobs. In the 1980s, king crab became even more valuable, and the death toll rose.

Commercial fishermen seek valuable king crab in remote areas in the Gulf of Alaska, along the Aleutian Islands, and especially in the Bering Sea. All these areas experience brutal weather conditions in the winter. Under the surface of the chaotic Bering Sea thrives the most productive fishery in the world. The Bering Sea Basin records more seismic activity than any other region on earth, and earthquakes shake the ground, while volcanoes erupt, spewing smoke and lava. In the winter in the North Pacific, the warm, clockwise Japanese current collides with the frigid, counterclockwise Bering Current as well as with extremely cold-water masses flowing south from the arctic. Where these opposing currents meet, violent storms explode, impacting the entire North American continent. In the winter months, storm after storm descends upon the relatively shallow, narrow Bering Sea, and hurricane-force winds create fifty-foot (15.24 m) waves. In sub-zero temperatures, the waves overtake boats and freeze instantly, adding tons of ice and destabilizing vessels. The crews must grab baseball bats and sledgehammers and work furiously for hours, pounding ice off the decks and railings to keep the boats from sinking.

Fishermen know danger lurks everywhere on the deck of a crab boat. To keep the heavy crab pots from shifting in rolling seas, they are stacked high and chained together when loaded on deck, but once the crew unchains the pots in preparation for deployment, a falling or sliding pot can crush a crewman. When a crewman launches a pot off the deck of the boat, he must take care the trailing line doesn’t wrap around one of his ankles, or he will be yanked overboard behind the pot. A pot swinging from the crane while it is transported to the launcher becomes a 700 lb. (317.5 kg) wrecking ball in lurching seas, and anyone in its way would unlikely survive the blow. A wave curling over the side of the boat can knock an unprepared individual off his feet, slamming him into the nearest barrier. Long hours and the repetitive work of baiting and dropping crab pots leads to fatigue, and accidents happen when a crewman loses focus.

A report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health indicated 128 per 100,000 Alaska fishermen perished on the job in 2007, making fishing in Alaska 26 times more dangerous than any other occupation in the U.S. Fishing deaths make up a third of all occupational fatalities in Alaska. Besides on-deck accidents, common causes of death for crab fishermen include drowning and hypothermia caused by the boat capsizing or the individual falling overboard. Eighty percent of crab fishery fatalities result from drowning.

A study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health determined out of 71 fishermen who fell overboard, only 17 wore a personal flotation device, despite indisputable evidence showing a personal flotation device makes an individual eight times more likely to survive a boating accident.

Between twenty and forty fishing boats capsize in Alaska each year, but no mandatory safety review exists to determine the stability of commercial fishing boats. Stacking heavy crab pots on the deck of a boat and filling or emptying its fuel tanks or crab tanks affect the stability of a vessel, and installing heavy trawling gear on the deck for use in other fisheries, further impacts the sea-worthiness of the boat. When a boat plows through heavy seas and begins to make ice, the stability once again changes. To learn more about stability considerations on a fishing boat, I invite you to read my newsletter: The Mystery of the “A” Boats.

I can think of few jobs worse than working as a crew member on a commercial crab fishing boat. No amount of money could offset the terror and danger I would experience. Still, crab fishing has gotten safer over the past thirty years. In my next post, I will discuss how legislation forced some safety measures on an industry reluctant to accept government interference.

Robin Barefield is the author of four Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, and The Fisherman’s Daughter, and Karluk Bones. You are invited to watch her webinar about how she became an author and why she writes Alaska wilderness mysteries. Also, sign up below to subscribe to her free, monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska, and listen to her podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.