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ABSTRACT
An observational work-sampling technique—Posture, Activity, Tools, and Handling (PATH)—was used to describe the prevalence of awkward postures and other physical risk factors for shoulder symptoms among a purposive sample of 11 small-scale commercial crab pot fishing crews. Fishing activities with awkward shoulder postures included hooking the buoy, feeding the rope into the hydraulic puller, and handling the crab pots. Increasing the size of the crew decreased the frequency of awkward shoulder postures for the captain but not for the mate. Awkward shoulder postures varied by technique, task distribution, equipment, and boat characteristics and setup, indicating these factors may be important determinants of exposure. Care should be taken in assuming personal techniques drives ergonomic exposure variability among these small-scale commercial fishermen.
This work was supported by NIOSH Grant No. R01 OH004073, NIEHS Training Grant No. P30ES10126, and NIOSH Grant No. R01 OH008249-02. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIOSH or NIEHS.
The authors acknowledge the significant contributions made by Mary Anne McDonald and Josh Levinson for their field work including interviews, field notes, photographs, and videotape footage. The authors thank Scott Fulmer for his assistance and instruction with PATH methodology. The authors acknowledge the help of the project coordinator, Sue Wolf, who assisted with all aspects of this study. They also thank Matt Nonnenmann for his insightful comments that greatly improved the manuscript. The authors' sincere thanks to the commercial fishermen who participated in this study and took the authors fishing with them.