The legs of upturned oyster tables have formed spikes. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 0911182)

Dave Hubert, 55, punctured his stomach while ormering on Monday when he fell on a spike from an upturned oyster table near Houmet Paradis.

Chief health and safety officer Richard Brown said that the equipment’s owners, Guernsey Sea Farms, as an employer conducting an undertaking, had a duty to members of the public who might be affected by their activities.

That duty would extend to all their activities, including those carried outside their premises on the beach.

‘However, it should be appreciated that the duty is limited under the law by the phrase “so far as is reasonably practicable”,’ said Mr Brown.

Shore gatherers regularly using the area could have been aware, prior to the incident, that there were oyster beds on the north edge of Paradis below the normal low water mark, where the rocks of Paradis meet a sandy bay area. These beds are only normally visible on very low spring tides.

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