Fishing Safety Starts With The People Who Go To Sea

Commercial fishing has always carried risk. It is part of the reality of working offshore, operating vessels in unpredictable conditions, managing gear, weather, fatigue, pressure, machinery, and the economic weight that follows every decision made at sea. But accepting that fishing is dangerous is not the same as accepting preventable harm.

For Darren Guard, fishing safety is not an abstract professional subject. It is personal, inherited, lived, and hard-earned. His family’s connection to New Zealand’s commercial fishing sector reaches back almost 200 years, through generations of fishermen and boatbuilders who understood the sea not from reports or policy documents, but from working decks, timber hulls, long days, dangerous bars, and the cost of mistakes.

That history matters because the fishing industry is not changed from the outside by rules alone. It changes when safety is understood in the language of the people doing the work.

“I just don’t like seeing injured people, and particularly when they’re friends and family.”

That simple line sits at the centre of the conversation around fishing safety. It is not about paperwork for paperwork’s sake. It is not about protecting systems before people. It is about making sure the men and women who go to sea come home with their health, their futures, and their dignity intact.

Fishing Safety And The Reality Of Commercial Fishing

Darren’s early life was shaped by the rhythms of the New Zealand fishing industry. School holidays meant going out on boats. Bad weather meant helping build them. Good weather meant fishing. His grandfather, Jack Guard, was a respected wooden boat builder who built more than 100 traditional timber-hulled fishing vessels over his lifetime, beginning his first vessel at just 11 years old and continuing almost until the age of 90.

That kind of background creates a very different kind of safety professional. Darren did not come into fishing safety from a boardroom or a regulatory desk. He came from inside the industry itself, with the kind of credibility that only exists when people know you have been wet, cold, frightened, and responsible for decisions on the water.

Fishing communities understand that difference immediately. They are not easily impressed by titles. They want to know whether the person standing in front of them understands the job, the pressure, the humour, the pride, the exhaustion, and the risk.

Darren does.

His own experience includes close calls, loss, and a near-death moment at sea that still lives within his family story. In 1991, New Zealand lost 11 fishermen on bar harbours, a tragedy that left a mark on the wider fishing community. Later, Darren himself found out what it means to face the possibility of not coming home, after overloading too much fish onto too small a boat in bad weather and calling his wife in the early hours of the morning to say goodbye.

It is one thing to tell people safety matters. It is another to have lived the consequences of getting it wrong.

From Fisherman To Safety Advocate

After his family’s fishing business retired around 2010, Darren had a choice. He could stay fishing, the only world he had known, or move into something different. That opportunity came through Maritime New Zealand, where he became an industry trainer and liaison, moving from commercial fishing directly into the regulatory environment.

That transition gave him a rare perspective. He understood the regulator. He understood the regulated. More importantly, he understood the gap between the two.

“I built a bridge between the regulator and the regulated.”

That bridge is where meaningful fishing safety often begins. Regulators may understand objectives, standards, and legal duties. Fishers understand weather windows, vessel limitations, crew dynamics, economic pressure, and the practical reality of operating at sea. When those two worlds fail to understand each other, even well-intentioned safety systems can become ignored, resisted, or treated as a burden.

Darren’s approach has never been about walking in with a big stick. It has been about influence, trust, translation, and practical systems that make sense to the people expected to use them.

At Sealord, one of New Zealand’s major fishing companies, Darren was brought in to address health and safety challenges across a fleet of vessels with more than 1,000 people at sea. The result was a significant reduction in injury rates, with lost time injury frequency brought down to a level that would be impressive in almost any industry, let alone commercial fishing.

But the achievement was not simply statistical. It came from understanding culture.

The Three Drivers Of Fishermen

Darren describes three key drivers within fishing: family, money, and competition. Safety messaging that ignores those drivers is unlikely to land. Safety messaging that connects to them can change behaviour.

Family matters because every injury at sea follows someone home. It changes relationships, income, identity, and the life of a household. Money matters because fishing is a business, and fishers under financial pressure make decisions inside that reality. Competition matters because fishing crews are proud, skilled, and deeply aware of what other vessels are doing.

The challenge is not to deny those drivers, but to use them honestly.

Darren’s practical method was simple and effective. He went to sea with crews. He observed. He listened. He carried out risk assessments and hazard-spotting exercises. But before reports went to the board, he took them back to the skipper.

That mattered. It showed respect. It turned safety from something imposed into something shared.

The result was not just compliance. It was ownership.

“There’s no secrets in safety.”

That philosophy is powerful because it cuts against the siloed, competitive instincts that can exist in any industry. If one vessel is doing something better, that knowledge should move. If one crew has found a safer way, that practice should spread. When lives are at stake, safety knowledge should not be guarded like commercial advantage.

Plain Language, Practical Systems, Real Change

One of the recurring problems in maritime safety is the gap between the written system and the working vessel. A safety management system can be technically correct and still fail if the people expected to use it do not understand it, trust it, or see its relevance.

Darren’s work through Guard Safety has focused on making safety simple, understandable, achievable, practical, and relevant. In one case, a five-page accident reporting form became two pages. Visual tools, video, plain language, encouragement, and a “we are in this together” approach replaced the kind of complexity that often drives people away from reporting and engagement.

That is not dumbing safety down. It is making it usable.

Fishing is not a classroom industry. Many fishers went to sea to avoid paperwork, offices, and bureaucracy. If safety systems are built as though every fisher wants to sit behind a desk, those systems will miss the people most in need of support.

Fisher Mental Health And The Pressure Below The Surface

Fishing safety cannot stop at physical injury. Mental health and wellbeing are now part of the safety conversation because the pressures facing fishers are real, sustained, and often hidden behind a culture of toughness.

Rising fuel prices, administrative burden, compliance costs, environmental pressure, social expectations, time away from home, isolation, and harsh working conditions all contribute to the strain. For smaller inshore and artisanal fishers, those pressures can be acute. The conversation around sustainability often focuses on fish stocks, oceans, and environmental management. Those are vital, but they are not the whole picture.

“We might have sustainable fish, but not necessarily sustainable fishers.”

That line should stop the industry in its tracks.

Globally, billions have been spent on sustainable fish stocks. Far less has been spent on the people who harvest those fish, support food security, and carry the human cost of the industry. Healthy oceans matter. So do healthy people.

Darren has been involved in fisher mental health work since 2019, helping create fisher-specific resources and supporting conversations that were once nearly invisible. He describes mental health as one of the hardest projects he has worked on, especially within a male-dominated sector where toughness is often part of the identity.

But behind that toughness are people carrying pressure, grief, fear, fatigue, responsibility, and sometimes pain they do not know how to express.

Fishing safety has to include them too.

MarineSAFE And The Future Of Accessible Training

One of the clearest examples of Darren’s practical approach is MarineSAFE, an online learning platform designed to provide health and safety training resources for fishers. The thinking behind it is straightforward. If fishers cannot realistically leave their work, travel ashore, and sit in classrooms, then training must reach them where they are.

Mobile access matters. Online learning matters. Video matters. Real fishing footage matters. Relevant examples matter.

MarineSAFE is built around the recognition that the most effective safety training is not abstract. It must be accessible, engaging, and connected to the actual working environment.

That thinking is now expanding through the MarineSAFE Pacific project, which aims to adapt safety training for Pacific fishing communities, including remote coastal and artisanal fishers who may have limited access to formal training. In many places, getting to a classroom is not just inconvenient. It is impossible without long travel, lost income, and major logistical barriers.

Technology offers a new route. With devices, connectivity, and community training hubs, safety education can reach places that traditional systems struggle to serve. The potential is significant, especially if training is adapted to local culture, fishing methods, and community structures.

This is not about exporting a one-size-fits-all model. It is about creating practical safety access where the need is greatest.

Global Standards And Local Realities

The Cape Town Agreement, coming into force in 2027, represents an important step for international fishing vessel safety, particularly for larger vessels. It creates another layer of global consistency and benchmarking, helping bring international standards into clearer alignment.

But Darren is also clear that different vessels and different sectors cannot always be measured with the same ruler. A small inshore vessel and a deep-water corporate factory vessel operate in very different realities. Both need safety. Both need accountability. But the route to achieving safety may look different.

That distinction is important. Effective regulation must understand scale, context, resource, vessel type, and operating conditions. The same goal may require different practical methods.

The strongest safety systems are not the ones that ignore those differences. They are the ones that understand them.

Listening To The People Affected

Asked what one thing he would improve in fishing safety, Darren’s answer was direct: those who make the rules need to listen and collaborate better with those affected by them.

That is not a rejection of regulation. It is a call for better regulation, better communication, and better outcomes.

Rules built without industry understanding may exist on paper but fail at sea. Rules developed through meaningful collaboration have a far better chance of becoming part of the culture, rather than something crews work around or resent.

Fishing safety is not won through distance. It is won through trust, relevance, and respect.

Getting Fishermen Home Safe

The phrase “getting fishermen home safe” is simple, but it carries the full weight of the issue. It means preventing injuries. It means reducing fatalities. It means supporting mental health. It means building safety systems that fishers can actually use. It means recognising the pressures on inshore and commercial fleets. It means valuing fishermen as people, not just as labour attached to vessels.

It also means preserving the stories, knowledge, and lived experience of fishing communities. Through The Gleam Fishing Channel, Darren has also been sharing fishing stories, safety messages, industry history, and the characters of New Zealand’s fishing world. That storytelling matters because safety is often learned not through instructions, but through stories people remember.

Commercial fishing will never be risk-free. The sea does not work that way. But the industry can be safer, smarter, more collaborative, and more human.

Fishing safety starts with the people who go to sea.

And it must end with them coming home.

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SUPPORTED BY

CHIRP Maritime & The Seafarers’ Charity

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CHIRP Maritime and The Seafarers’ Charity support Sea Views and its commitment to meaningful maritime conversations that place safety, seafarer wellbeing, and industry responsibility at the centre of the discussion.

CHIRP Maritime: www.chirp.co.uk

The Seafarers’ Charity: www.theseafarerscharity.org

https://youtu.be/pZftp8AA4Pc

Fishing safety starts with the people who go to sea. In this Sea Views conversation, Darren Guard of Guard Safety brings lived commercial fishing experience, practical safety culture, fisher wellbeing, MarineSAFE, and global fishing safety into sharp focus.