Since early 2019, ACC have been making grants available to organisations who can help solve workplace health and safety problems that affect multiple businesses in New Zealand. These grants are used to carry out projects around innovation, capability building and research, and then the benefits are shared across industries. The idea is to support those who can collaborate to improve workplace health and safety for many businesses and their workers.

The NZ Federation of Commercial Fishermen, partnered with Guard Safety, have successfully received a grant from ACC in support of the MarineSAFE project.

The MarineSAFE project will create online video-based realistic training, with assessments, that will focus on the risks associated with the commercial fishing industry and provide them on an accessible Learning Management System platform to overcome some of the challenges of land-based training.

The resources developed will be available on mobile devices, simple to access and use, and will support fishing vessels current induction, training, and compliance requirements.

The training will be focused on improving health and safety outcomes and reducing injury rates for the commercial fishing sector.

The first phase of the MarineSAFE project is initially intended for the inshore sector with the aim of growing and developing into all seafood sectors. The great news is that ALL resources developed in the initial phase will be free and beneficial across the seafood sector. Further tailored resources, training programmes, downloadable templates and health and safety material will be developed after this initial phase and be available to the wider seafood sector as the MarineSAFE voyage continues.

The first module should be available on the MarineSAFE learning platform in November so don’t forget to like the MarineSAFE facebook page to keep up to date on all the latest news! For any other queries please email the MarineSAFE team at [email protected].

You can also check out the first MarineSAFE newsletter here