Serious citation upheld in drowning death of sea lion trainer

A $5,000 citation against a naval contractor that trains sea lions to detect trespassers was upheld after the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission determined that a failure to mitigate drowning hazards led to the death of an employee.

In Secretary of Labor v. Science Applications International Corp., the full commission on Thursday held that the company violated the general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act during its marine mammal training operations. 

The Reston, Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp. had been working in Coronado, California, to train sea lions to detect and locate trespassing swimmers in and around U.S. Navy installations. Employees were required to swim in open water, scuba dive and work with the animals in floating pens.

On April 28, 2014, a supervisor and two employees were conducting training, with one worker in the water acting as the “enemy swimmer” while the others handled the sea lions on a boat and released them for training. After several successful training runs, the swimming employee was found unresponsive in the water and pronounced dead at the hospital from drowning.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the company for a serious violation carrying a penalty of $5,000 for failure to “maintain contact with the deployed swimmer” and having knowledge of the hazardous condition. The company appealed the citation, arguing that “certain hazards … cannot be the basis of a general duty clause violation” because they fall “beyond the scope” of the OSH Act.

Although drowning is an obvious risk of swimming, and swimming was a required work activity for SAIC’s employees, there was a “direct nexus” between the cited drowning hazard and the work being performed and is covered by the general duty clause, the commission said.

Given that the training exercise occurred at night among underwater obstacles and that the cited drowning hazard was reasonably foreseeable by a reasonable employer, the commission held that the company violated the general duty clause and upheld the serious citation and penalty.