We just love paradoxes. They’re like the Rubik’s cube you’ve been working on for days but can’t put down – phrases that are so close to logical and straightforward that we’re determined to figure them out and yet they remain enigmatic and exciting.

The classic line from George Orwell’s novel “1984” is a perfect example, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” This sentence has lived rent-free in my mind for 20 years. But why?

The definition of a paradox is “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.” I’m often drawn to Orwell’s paradoxical sentence because its enigmatic nature is intriguing, and because I spend time with it, I find the truth in it.

Everyone understands safety in aquaculture operations, at least theoretically. We all want everyone to be able to do their jobs and go home safely and in good health at the end of the day. And yet, injuries remain too common despite great efforts towards realizing workplace safety. The challenge, it seems, lies in how to get people to take this desire and engrain it into every decision they make every day. We need to have this way of thinking living rent-free in people’s minds for 20 years and beyond.

What we need is to frame safety thinking as a paradox, so everyone is drawn to it, chews on it, and finds the truth in it.

And so, I present to you, the aquaculture safety paradox: Too fast is too slow, more is less, safe is unsafe.

Too fast is too slow

I hate getting cuts. Like, I really hate cuts, especially on my hands.

In a previous life on salmon farms, we did our net cleaning and mending at sea as we didn’t have a net loft close enough to send them away. When we emptied a pen, we would raise it, ring-layer by ring-layer, pressure wash it and mend it. When it was raised completely, we would float a small flat-bottomed boat inside the pen and pressure wash the bottom, then would spend time on our knees on the deck, leaning over the side, mending it.

During this bottom-mending process, we would have a knife in one hand and our mending needle in another. As a young man who wanted to impress his coworkers, the first few times I did this task, I kept pushing to go faster. With my hands in the water, my skin was soft, and while I’d get one patch done quickly, I would keep cutting my hand because I would move too fast and knick my hand on my knife. After a few cuts, my hands would be sore and swollen, and, honestly, I ended up being slower.

Ultimately, I became better at the task, and safer, when I slowed down just a little. Sure, I didn’t get the first patch done as quickly, but I got more patches done each day when I stopped injuring myself. The age-old adage that says slow and steady wins the race is so true when it comes to farm safety. I’m not saying slow production to a snail’s pace, but the stats don’t lie: when people rush, they get hurt. This phenomenon is only amplified when you’re working in a dynamic, water-based environment. So, before you leap from that platform to save one second, think about the hours it will take to fix up your broken leg.

As my workplace says now, “Take a minute.”

More is less

This is the most obtuse of the three, but I think it’s important. Injuries and safety risks cost us time, money, mental health and productivity. These costs are largely able to be addressed through the application of smart safety solutions. Where opportunities for safer solutions exist, the reduction in costs associated with not addressing that risk represents a positive ROI for our operations.

A misunderstanding of the logic behind this can be carried too far – wearing two lifejackets is not more safe, rather a case where more is actually more in terms of the financial cost of lifejackets as well as the productivity cost of having a staff who can barely move.

A good example is vessel-mounted cranes. In the past, some farmers would shy away from the cost of engineered cranes and would opt for simple, fabricated aluminum boom cranes. These would usually do the trick, but without proper engineering, and an increasing workload, these cranes began to present a real safety risk with enormous costs.

I remember hearing about one farmer who was killed when one of these broke, the cost to his family and his crew was immeasurable, and the application of a relatively small cost of an engineered crane could have avoided this. As well, once the crane is installed, the application of more time to maintain that crane properly results in less downtime and less risk.

Safe is unsafe

Safety is not some goal we arrive at and we’re done. It’s a way of thinking, and its proper application looks like a constant reassessment of existing practices, gear, workflows, etc. to identify ways to do better.

New workers tend to be the most likely to be injured because they’re new, unfamiliar, or have something to prove (see me cutting myself above!). But they’re not the only ones: very experienced workers get injured too. The human brain loves to simplify its work as much as possible. When someone has done certain tasks for years, they build muscle memory, and the brain gets used to associated risk factors and begins to tune them out. But in a dynamic environment, this makes their work less safe.

We have not achieved the enlightened state of the perfectly safe workplace, and we may never get there. But we must keep trying. When we think we’ve completed the work of workplace safety, and we’ve got it all figured out, we increase our risk through a decrease in conscious awareness.

Will this paradox solve workplace safety? No. But can it take a place in your coworkers’ minds, prompting regular engagement and discovery of workplace safety truth? Absolutely. Even the cowboy boat captain who thinks lifejackets are actually more dangerous (we all know one) will still be engaging with it while he makes fun of it and tries to poke holes in it.

Stay safe, everyone.

Ben Normand a fish farmer, writer, college instructor, and cheerleader for aquaculture. He has worked with various fin and shellfish species in New Zealand and Canada in production management, compliance, and communications. (ben.r.normand@gmail.com)

Aquaculture North America

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