Person hit by mud/clay during anchor handling operations
- Safety Flash
- Published on 29 November 2016
- Generated on 21 February 2026
- IMCA SF 32/16
- 2 minute read
The Marine Safety Forum (MSF) has published a safety alert regarding an incident in which a person was hit by mud/clay during anchor handling operations.
What happened?
The incident occurred during recovery of anchors from the seabed. A person was injured when a 50 kg lump of mud/clay rolled onto his back as he was checking the identification number of a shackle. The injured person was a marine representative. The anchor was secured on deck and tension was off but the anchor had not been disconnected and moved to the stowage area. Most of the mud/clay had fallen off during the recovery but some mud/clay was still attached to the anchor.
The submitter of the report notes that the injured person did not see the hazard and as he was leaning down the mud/clay rolled off and hit him over his back. He fell and sprained his ankle and suffered pain in his back as the result of the incident.
It should be noted that it remains everyone’s responsibility to STOP unsafe acts and to ensure all persons on deck are operating in a safe manner.
IMCA notes that the root causes of this incident are not in the report. Failure to properly control the worksite, inadequate risk assessment, and inadequate supervision, would appear to be amongst the causal factors in this incident.
The full report can be found here.
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