Interactions and Navigational Safety

The fishing and oil and gas industries have shared the use of waters around Britain for more than four decades. The sharing of common waters between two industries requires good working relationships and attention to potential interactions, especially with respect to safety. The UK oil & gas industry, through Oil & Gas UK, has over the years taken positive steps to develop methods and systems that allow both industries to work safely and efficiently together and to promote harmonious working relations.

The UK oil and gas industry has contributed significant funding towards FishSAFE the seabed information service that defines the position and nature of permanent offshore installations which may be a potential hazard to fishing vessels or their equipment.

FishSAFE provides up-to-date electronic mapping of oil and gas subsea and surface infrastructure in UK waters. This data is disseminated to all fishermen through a digital format suitable for use in a variety of electronic chart systems, free of charge bi-annually. Data is sourced from the National Data Repository managed for the OGA, co-ordinated by Common Data Access (CDA), Schlumberger and SFIA. FishSAFE is sponsored by FLTCS. Fishermen in the UK are also provided with detailed co-ordinates of each UKCS suspended well via the bi-annual Kingfisher Yellow Card, with updates published every two weeks in the Kingfisher Fortnightly Bulletin. This publication is soon to be available in an enhanced digital version.