NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Program and the University of Texas Health Center in Tyler, Texas are holding a training session Tuesday at 8 a.m., at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Abbeville, La., to help educate shrimp boat captains on fishing vessel safety practices.
The target audience is 24 Vietnamese Gulf of Mexico shrimp boat captains. The training will consist of four classroom sessions covering communication, navigation, fire, flooding, health and first aid. Each session is scheduled to last 30 minutes. The entire course will be conducted in Vietnamese.
Once the classroom sessions are completed a hands on training session will be conducted using a well maintained fishing vessel as a training platform. The shrimp boat captains will work together in groups and will be required to implement the classroom training they received. The training exercise will include communication, ship channel navigation, proper fires extinguisher use, fire prevention, flooding management, emergency calls for help and abandon ship evolutions. The final exercise will include a scenario where all the captains will work together to handle an emergency which requires them to abandon ship.
After the all hands training is completed the captains will return to the classroom for a short test and discussion about the training.
This training program was a culmination of work between the Coast Guard and the University of Texas Health Center and is currently funded by a grant from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
