Safety is paramount as lobster fishermen prepare for the start of the 2017 season.
Approximately 1700 vessels, loaded with traps, will head out with about 5800 people aboard those boats.
Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the Coast Guard and the Department of National Defence all have resources at the ready.
Sean Arbour with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, says it’s the largest roster they’ve ever had.
“Typically, all assests are instructed to follow the density of the fishing vessels,” he says.
“So they all have palces where they start, and if they notice the majority of the fishing fleet is elsewhere or moving on to other places, they’ll typically follow.”
Arbour says they’ve also beefed up the amount of time for their crews.
He says it’s a high-risk fishery.
When Dumping Day comes, everyone goes out at once.
“The risk of things like disabled vessels, sometimes you get a lot of green-people, new hands on ship [and] they fall overboard,” he says.
“Something we saw quite a bit of is people working hard and there can be cardiac events that happen quite often you need medevacs.”
Two Coast Guard auxiliary vessels will follow the fleet out of Lockeport.
The Coast Guard cutters ‘Westport’ and ‘Spray’ will be out of West Head, Cape Sable Island.
Coast Guard and DFO vessels will be off the coasts of Yarmouth and Digby.
Air assets include a Cormorant helicopter which is deployed to Yarmouth and a C-130 Hercules fixed-wing aircraft that will patrol from Halifax around to Digby.
