Unalaska, AK & Washington, DC – Dockside inspections and other measures have improved commercial fishing safety dramatically over the past decade and a half, but the industry still has a long way to go.

That was the message delivered to a Congressional subcommittee in Washington yesterday in a hearing on the issue.

The purpose of the meeting of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation was to look at whether safety statutes adopted 19 years ago have actually improved the safety records of what remains the country's most dangerous industry.

Although commercial fishing fatalities have fallen steadily since the early '90s, the Coast Guard still describes the death rate among fishermen as "unacceptable in comparison to other segments of the maritime industry and the American workforce in general."

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Craig Bone told the subcommittee that voluntary dockside inspections by the Coast Guard had significantly cut down on the number of fishing fatalities, particularly in Alaska.

"It's an example where the state's been directly involved, other organizations and agencies have been involved, and the industries themselves have basically stepped up," he said. "In places like Alaska and Maine we've seen some of that, but I don't think it's been accomplished nationwide."

The Coast Guard has offered voluntary dockside inspections for the past 16 years. Alaska's Fish and Game Department requires inspections of any boat that's fishing in a rationalized fishery or carrying a fisheries observer onboard. That means that most of the vessels fishing in the state's most dangerous waters, like the Bering Sea, get inspected.

That's not true of many Northeastern states, and Bone said that not much more progress could be made on safety there until the inspections were made mandatory.