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The Fifth Time: What the Death of Hugh MacLachlan on Nista Tells the Creel Fishing Industry About Lone-Operated Fishing and Back Rope Entanglement

🕑 5 min read words Safety • Incident

Vessel: Nista, 7.78m creel fishing vessel
Date & location: 13 December 2023, Isle of Luing, Scotland
Outcome: Skipper Hugh MacLachlan entangled in the shooting back rope and pulled overboard, drowned. Fifth UK lone creel fisherman lost this way since 2019
Human factors: Industry Normalisation · Unimplemented Recommendations · Equipment Failure
Source: MAIB Report 10/2025

9 decision nodes4 outcome paths — separated / exposed to gear~7 min read + Knowledge Checker

Isle of Luing, Scotland — 13 December 2023

Hugh MacLachlan, 58, had fished these waters his whole career and was known locally for encouraging others to wear their PFDs. Shooting a fleet of creels alone at around 6 knots, he became entangled in the back rope — most likely while clearing a jammed creel at the shooting gate, a task normally done by stepping over the taut rope on an 8-metre working deck. He was pulled through the gate and into the sea. The weight of the deployed creels held him under; the drag of the water stripped his inflated PFD off over his head. With no reboarding ladder and an EPIRB that had expired, he had no way to raise an alarm or get back aboard. The vessel motored on unmanned for nearly three hours before grounding on a shoal.

A Failure That Had Already Killed Four Others

Nista was the fifth near-identical UK lone-creel fatality since 2019: Sea Mist (2019), Saint Peter (2021), Harriet J (2021), and Goodway (2021) all involved solo skippers overcome by the same back rope entanglement mechanism. Each investigation produced recommendations for the Fishing Industry Safety Group to improve guidance for single-handed fishermen. A working group was established after the third death. Its proposals had not been implemented when Hugh MacLachlan died in the fifth.

Recommended Actions

MCA Fishermen's Safety Guide already states single-handed operation is not recommended due to the level of risk — this should be treated as a hard operating constraint, not general advice
Fit a reboarding ladder and keep a knife within reach of the shooting gate specifically, not just at the baiting station
Check and fasten PFD crotch straps before every trip — inflation alone does not prevent the device being stripped off during gear entanglement
Confirm EPIRB in-date status before every trip; a written risk assessment has been mandatory on vessels this size since September 2021

Human Element Analysis

Industry Normalisation

A well-known, repeatedly fatal risk continued to operate unchallenged because addressing it at scale requires industry-level change — equipment, guidance, and economics — that an individual skipper working alone cannot deliver by himself.

Unimplemented Recommendations

MAIB recommendations from four prior near-identical deaths already existed and were already outstanding. The finding of this investigation was, in effect, that nothing new needed to be recommended — the existing recommendations simply hadn't been acted on.

Equipment Failure

An expired EPIRB, no reboarding ladder, and a PFD stripped off by drag were three independent equipment gaps that each, alone, removed a chance of survival.

How This Pattern Repeats

Industry	Incident	The parallel
Construction	Repeated scaffold-fall fatalities, UK HSE data	A well-documented, repeatedly fatal hazard in a single-operator role that keeps recurring because the fix requires industry-wide equipment or working-practice change, not individual vigilance alone.
Agriculture	PTO shaft entanglement deaths, ongoing UK pattern	Lone operators working with moving mechanical gear where a single entanglement point removes any chance of self-rescue — the same structural risk as an unshielded back rope.
Mining	Pike River Mine disaster, 2010	Known, previously flagged hazards in a high-risk single-point-of-failure environment, where recommended changes from earlier warnings had not been fully implemented before the fatal event.

See How You'd Handle It

The scenario opens mid-shoot, a creel jammed at the gate, the back rope still under tension. What you do before clearing it is the first decision point.

What Every Creel Fisherman Should Take From This

A knife within reach of the shooting gate — not the baiting station — is the only realistic way out of an entanglement when working alone
Check your PFD crotch strap is fastened before every trip; an inflated device without one can be stripped off in seconds
Check your EPIRB's expiry date today — it's printed on the unit
If you fish alone, the guidance is explicit that this is not recommended; reduce the risk to the lowest practicable level rather than accepting it as normal

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick safety round and see how you score. Or try the full branching Decision Simulator scenario built from this investigation — work through the real decision points and see which ending you reach.