Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Compliance (46 CFR Part 28): What Owners Must Carry

Commercial fishing consistently ranks among the most dangerous occupations in the United States, and the safety regime reflects it. Commercial fishing vessels are uninspected in the traditional sense — most do not carry a Certificate of Inspection like a passenger or towing vessel — but they are far from unregulated. 46 CFR Part 28 sets the safety equipment, examination, and training requirements that a fishing vessel owner must meet, and the dockside safety examination program enforces them. This guide covers what owners actually have to carry and keep current.

Why fishing vessels are regulated differently

Fishing vessels do not go through the COI inspection cycle that inspected vessels do. Instead, the framework is built around carrying the right safety equipment, keeping it serviceable, and being able to use it — backed by a voluntary-but-effectively-expected dockside safety examination that results in a decal. Many fisheries, ports, and insurers treat a current exam decal as a practical prerequisite to operating.

The requirements scale with where the vessel operates (the boundary line, beyond it, the distance offshore) and the number of people aboard — so a near-shore day boat and an offshore catcher-processor carry very different loads.

What 46 CFR Part 28 requires owners to carry and do

The picture, generalized (the specifics depend on the vessel's size, route, and people aboard):

• Lifesaving equipment — immersion suits where the water and route demand them, life rafts or other survival craft, lifebuoys, EPIRBs, and signaling devices.
• Firefighting equipment — extinguishers and, on larger vessels, fixed systems.
• Dewatering and damage control — bilge pumps and high-water alarms.
• Survival and emergency equipment appropriate to the operating area and water temperature.
• Examinations — the dockside safety exam and the decal that comes with passing it, kept current.
• Drills and training — emergency instructions and drills for the crew; a designated drill conductor on certain vessels.
• Documentation — the records that show the equipment is aboard, serviced, and within date (immersion suits, rafts, EPIRBs, and extinguishers all have service or expiry dates).

The failure mode here is rarely a missing rule and usually an out-of-date piece of survival equipment — an EPIRB battery, a raft servicing, an expired flare — discovered at a dockside exam or, far worse, in an emergency.

What compliance software has to do for a fishing operation

A fishing owner's compliance load is equipment-and-date-driven more than credential-driven:

• Service and expiry tracking for rafts, EPIRBs, immersion suits, extinguishers, and flares, with lead-time alerts.
• Exam decal currency tracked per vessel.
• Drill and emergency-instruction records.
• Crew documentation where the fishery or vessel requires it.
• An evidence trail ready for a dockside examiner.

Where Binnacle AI fits

Binnacle AI tracks the equipment-and-date burden a fishing operation actually lives with: servicing and expiry dates for survival and firefighting gear with lead-time alerts, dockside-exam decal currency per vessel, drill records, and an audit-ready trail an examiner can be shown in minutes. Its AI document scanner captures service certificates and crew documents from a photo, and flat pricing from $49/month suits an owner-operator rather than an enterprise. Map your requirements with the free compliance calculator.

The bottom line

Fishing vessels are uninspected but heavily safety-regulated under 46 CFR Part 28, and the burden is keeping survival and firefighting equipment serviceable and in date, holding a current exam decal, and running drills — with the records to prove it. The thing that gets owners is an expired piece of survival gear found at an exam or in an emergency. Track the dates, keep the evidence, and the dockside exam becomes routine. For the broader buying picture, see choosing maritime compliance software.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Comply with 46 CFR Part 28 and USCG requirements for your specific vessel, route, and fishery.