P.E.I. student who's worked on lobster boats seeking patent for new life-jacket

A 21-year-old university student has received a $50,000 grant to continue developing a new life-jacket he designed specifically for commercial fishermen.

Ben Collings-MacKay is in fourth year at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia but hails from Montague in eastern P.E.I.. He has been spending most of his summers out on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, fishing lobster. 

But he is also the founder of CM Marine Safety Equipment, which in mid-June was awarded top prize for northern Nova Scotia in the annual Spark Nova Scotia competition meant "to activate early-stage innovation in rural parts of Nova Scotia."

Collings-MacKay knows first-hand the challenges fishermen face having to wear both an approved life-jacket or personal flotation device and the kind of protective gear that can keep them warm and dry as they handle heavy traps and nets in a physically demanding job.

"My first season, I remember we were setting the gear out in Annandale [off northeastern P.E.I.]. We came back in for a second load and a boat pulled up beside us and this guy jumped off his boat," he told CBC's Wayne Thibodeau.

"There was an older man and he was soaking wet. Turns out he got hit by a trap and fell overboard... It kind of put the idea in my head, like 'Why wasn't he wearing a life-jacket?' You know, that could have ended a lot differently that day."

The life-jackets on his own boat were "cumbersome, they were bulky and they're getting caught on things and getting in the way," he said. "The vast majority of the time we weren't wearing them."

The challenge stayed in his head until last fall, where he had to come up with a business idea for an entrepreneurship class at St. FX.

"The main difference is that the ones that are available now are an external device," he said. "They go over top of the oil gear. It's totally separate from it.

"Mine will be integrated into the oil pants. So this way it will be hopefully a seamless transition from normal oil pants to oil pants with a life-jacket integrated into them."

He added: "It will also have a couple different safety features, added safety features to keep fishermen alive in the water and be found sooner. You know, it'll be a lot more flexible and comfortable."

The prototype he showed for the competition was made with the help of his sister's sewing machine.

"I kept on running into the problem of people not really being able to visualize what I was talking about, and I'm not the best drawer, so I couldn't... really sketch it out too well for them," he said.

Hence the appeal to his sister.