When around water, safety experts can tend to drone on about life jackets and other personal flotation devices (PFDs) – and there seems to be evidence every year that the advice isn’t always heeded, as witnessed by the number of drowning deaths on America’s water ways due to people being thrown overboard and not having a life jacket, or being too inebriated to save themselves even while wearing a PFD.

[Image courtesy of Danila Medvedev from Flickr, via a Creative Commons license]Life jackets are a life-saver for commercial fishermen, as described in a NIOSH video.

Sure, there are conscientious boaters who wear PFDs whenever they are on deck, and there are others who only see the need for them when they leave the boat voluntarily to go swimming or skiing. But one particular event has now become the torch that lights the fire of education about the true value and necessity for PFDs, even for those who are experienced boatmen or swimmers.

The example is featured in a 10-minute video produced by NIOSH, which highlights the crew of the skiff Paul Revere, which capsized in 2010. It was working in Bristol Bay, Alaska, when it sank, though all three crew members survived after spending more than two hours in ice-cold water waiting for rescue.

The three crewmembers all had inflatable life jackets as their PFDs, and those jackets not only kept them afloat, they also managed to insulate their bodies against the water, which slowed down the effects of hypothermia. With the PFDs, the crewmembers did not have to tread water or swim, which expends energy; and that energy was kept in the body by the insulating effect of the life jackets, which allowed the trio to last two hours in water that could have taken people’s lives in a matter of minutes.

The 10-minute video, which includes interviews of two of the threePaul Revere survivors, was created for NIOSH to develop an awareness initiative encouraging more use of PFDs on commercial fishing ships, where nearly 200 fishermen drowned over a 12-year span in man-overboard incidents – all of whom were not wearing PFDs.

If you have interest in the story of the Paul Revere, you can check out this link. To see the video created by NIOSH about the incident, click here; and if you want to get training information about commercial fishing safety, hit this link.