A review of fatigue in fishermen: a complicated and underprioritised area of research

Abstract

Background: Fatigue in fishing has been a highly underprioritised area of research, even though fatigue has been found to be the largest single contributing factor in accidents.

Aim: The aim of this article/paper is to provide an overview of the research conducted on fatigue in fishermen up to date, in order to establish a starting point for further research in this area.

Materials and methods: The review is mainly based on journal articles from PubMed, Google Scholar, International Maritime Health, Science Direct and some relevant articles links were also followed.

Results: The research revealed that only 5 articles have been published concerning fatigue in fishermen.The articles all confirmed that fatigue is a serious health and safety issue among fishermen, and that further research therefore is warranted.

Conclusions: Only 2 of the 5 studies of fishermen’s fatigue used objective measures and in one of these, the sample size was small (n = 19), effectively limiting the statistical analysis and its application. Further research using larger samples is needed, preferably with a mix of objective and subjective measures, where of some of the questions should be scenario based and some should be from standardised questionnaires. Greater understanding is also needed to assess how much of the variance in fatigue is attributable to e.g. length of trip, hours of work without rest, and type of job and specific tasks. A greater understanding of the similarities and differences between acute and long-term fatigue is also needed.