There continues to be a crying need for greater information, understanding and enforcement of regulations – as well as testing – of cargoes that may liquefy.  Nickel ore is one such.  Intercargo, the International Association of Dry Cargo Shipowners, has commendably been a leader in fighting for international action to protect the lives of seafarers, at risk when bulk cargo vessels, like the Supramax Vinalines Queen, suddenly disappear.

Over the years, many such losses involved vessels carrying direct reduced iron (DRI), a cargo prone to heating when wet, sometimes resulting in a disastrous explosion.  It took many years for international authorities to recognize the culpability of unscrupulous shippers and consignees – one of our industry’s little secrets.

It will be recalled that in December of 2010, three bulk carriers and their crews were lost, all as a result of cargo liquefaction.  The danger hasn’t gone away.

There is a need for stronger and clearer requirements particularly with respect to accurate information on the carriage of bulk cargoes.  The IMO has held meetings, most recently last September, of its Sub-Committee on Dangerous Goods, Solid Cargoes and Containers (DSC), with many participants, including Intercargo, The International Group of P&I Clubs, The International Union of Marine Insurers, as well as other industry associations, to take further action strengthening the requirements of the existing IMSBC Code.  A prepared schedule for nickel ore will be further reviewed this coming March, before – hopefully – its inclusion in the IMSBC Code at the forthcoming Dangerous Goods Sub-Committee in September.

The safety terminology of hazardous cargoes uses the term “Competent Authority”.  Usually, such an Authority is either a shipper at the port of loading, or receiver at the point of destination.  Rob Lomas, the Secretary General of Intercargo has called for  “…the reassurances of the Competent Authorities in…exporting countries that their procedures and processes have integrity and transparency so that this message is received and most importantly, trusted by the shipowners.  Competent Authorities are key to ensuring that seafarers’ lives are not put in danger”.

It is also clear that bulker losses like that of the Vinalines Queen are taking place within specific trades, and with similar destinations in the Far East.  It would be very helpful if the International Maritime Organization (IMO) could study these specific trades, with the objective of getting the word out on hazardous bulk cargoes.  Many of the ships that have been lost have crews and flag states that are not likely to have gotten the necessary information on the risks involved, and the measures that need to be taken, in handling dangerous or difficult cargoes.

The Vinalines Queen was built in 2005, and from all available information was in satisfactory condition.  Its loss is another tragedy that didn’t need to happen.

At the same time, the termination of the Global Maritime and Transportation School (GMATS), which has been at the forefront of professional training since its founding in 1994, seems to be another illustration of an “asleep at the switch” attitude toward our urgent maritime requirements. The two episodes have more in common than might at first appear.

Up to now, GMATS, located at King’s Point, has provided more than 140 maritime education and training programs, including four categories: nautical science and military training, marine engineering, transportation logistics and management. In 2010, more than 4,000 students were enrolled in GMATS programs. All of this now comes to an end, although the various state-sponsored maritime academies will no doubt attempt to take up the slack.

Many of the courses offered have particular significance in educating mariners in the finer points of safety management, a matter of increasing concern in our complex transportation environment. Bridge resource management, decision making, situational awareness, master/pilot relationships and voyage planning were among the courses on offer. Many of these courses were tailored to the equipment employed aboard ships owned by the companies sponsoring the students themselves.

The United States lacks a coherent policy for the advancement of seafarer education. Dedicated maritime professionals are basically taking the lead with little or no national support.

Nevertheless, the United States is dependent to a constantly growing degree on safe and successful maritime systems. Since 1852, when the Steamboat Inspection Service was formed, the United States Coast Guard has certified and licensed our seafarers, with licenses at first issued to masters, chief mates, engineers and pilots. Certificates for lifeboatmen and able seamen were inaugurated in 1915, following the loss of the TITANIC.

In 1936, the Officers’ Competency Certificates Convention was adopted, bringing with it more advanced requirements. The growing regulatory impact of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW), which was adopted in 1978 and entered into force in 1984, has had a massive impact on standards and qualifications for officers and watch personnel on seagoing merchant ships. Advances in technology resulted in amendments in 1995, and last year.

Seafarers throughout the world are familiar with bridge training simulators, which have revolutionized the way in which navigation and watchkeeping are taught. Programs like that of GMATS provide training in docking and undocking, bridge-to-bridge communications, safe navigation and the handling of towing vessels, barges and other craft in differing conditions of visibility, wind, current, traffic and unpredictable situations. Master/pilot communications, crisis management and the finer points of situational awareness are an important part of the course content, which go beyond the requirements mandated by the U.S. Coast Guard and the STCW Convention.

The provision of skills-based training, involving visual piloting, paper, electronic chart plotting, radar/ARPA and traffic management are all essentials in learning safe navigation in a complex variety of potential conditions that may occur on a vessel. The United States Merchant Marine Academy has been a leader in the development of Coast Guard-certified electronic display courses, which have themselves been the underpinning for the recent revisions to the STCW Convention. It is clear that a simulation-equipped classroom environment is a critically important teaching tool, in addition to the solo navigation training provided by use of simulators. What has been called the “revolution in navigation and visual training”, propelled by advances in Electronic Chart Display and Information Service (ECDIS) navigational training, has brought great advances in the programs offered at King’s Point and the federally regulated state maritime academies. As a result, ECDIS was included in the 2009 STCW Code and Guidance revisions that are part of the 2010 Manila Amendments.

At the International Maritime Organization (IMO), governments have strongly supported assessment criteria for heightened navigational competencies, uniform standards for ECDIS training, and guidance for vessel operators and flag states. The U.S Coast Guard has proposed requirements implementing the STCW Amendments, requiring all deck watch officers assign to ECDIS-equipped vessels to “provide evidence of meeting the standard of competence” in ECDIS, and formulating the standards for such skills for United States mariners. A responsible approach to maritime education will require a comprehensive plan that is not at the mercy of the failures of political Washington.

There will invariably be no weighbridge, or weighing device available to tell of the shipper’s crime, and despite menacing creaking noises coming from the reach stacker in the terminal, or the noises of protest from the shiploader, this wretched box may then find its way high onto the stack aboard ship. And this, alas will be the straw that metaphorically breaks the camel’s back, collapsing the stow as the ships works in the seaway, and taking several dozen other boxes to a watery grave.

This may cause only anger and disappointment, but people who couldn’t care less about the weights they stuff into a container have already capsized feeder container ships, smashed up cranes, had forklifts standing on their forks and very likely subjected large ships to fatal structural stresses. The MSC Napoli’s loss was at least contributed to by a large number of overweight boxes, while that of the feeder Dongedyk which could have drowned her crew if her capsize had occurred in deeper water, was certainly caused by her chief officer not having a clue about the weight of their cargo.

It is going on all the time, as any containership Mate who has compared the draught with the tonnage of cargo declared will confirm. Terminals seem powerless to intervene, and everyone seems unwilling to be nasty to the shippers. So it is good that the IAPH has joined the World Shipping Council, ICS and BIMCO in calling on IMO to have the SOLAS Convention amended to require accurate and verified weights of containers. About time too.

It could be argued that shippers ought to be the guilty party that is brought to heel here and that shippers’ organisations, which spend inordinate amounts of time whining and protesting about carriers might be considered the missing guest at the feast. It is shippers that cause the damage, who risk people’s lives, and who fundamentally cheat over container weights. So let’s hear it from them. Weighing containers is not rocket science. They are doing it in the US, where there is less generosity towards cheats and it ought to be made universal.

The deteriorating health of the euro, and the growing likelihood that Brussels will resort to some sort of horrific fiscal union in the near future, are raising questions about the future of the European Union itself. Critics worry that members of the bloc will  confront ever larger losses of sovereignty, and be strapped into a one-size-fits-all currency that probably will not suit each country’s economy.

This situation may contribute to policy friction between EU members, but unlike the well-known grit in an oyster’s shell’s producing a precious pearl, the result would not be pleasant to behold.  Displays of political — indeed, theatrical — irritability are usually not constructive.  They often resemble a barroom brawl.

Which brings us to consideration of our particular apple cart: EMSA, the European Maritime Safety Agency. EMSA would not exist, were it not for an expression of political will — by politicians, no less.  We in the shipping industry are, so to speak, industrious critics of those politicians who, as we tirelessly remind one another, don’t understand shipping, and never will.

But then there’s EMSA. Its arrival on the scene, lest we forget, came about as a result of events that caused even us to concede that all was not well with matters maritime — at least when it came to keeping ships safely afloat. A “quiet life” it wasn’t. The 1987 investigation after the sinking of the ro/ro ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, headed by Sir Barry Sheen, is recognized as having shown that local oversight alone wasn’t always sufficient.  The inquiry into the Braer tanker accident off the Shetlands in 1993, chaired by Lord Donaldson, gave rise to a report, “Safer Ships, Cleaner Seas“, mapping the need for commitment to primary safety goals set by the IMO, while calling for an operationally effective regulatory framework.

The losses of the Erika and Prestige (the latter off Spain in November, 2002) showed the need for, among other things, a higher level of professional skill in responding to a casualty (ports of refuge, anyone?); better use of available resources; a greater degree of preparedness; and a more competent, coordinated and cooperative approach to the conduct of investigations.

EMSA, created by the European Parliament in 2002, is essentially a service provider, supporting the EU Commission in implementing EU laws on marine pollution preparedness, detection and response. It also advises the EU on ship security, seafarer training, port state control, classification societies and certification of marine equipment. As such, it helps make policy.

So, what has all this to do with the upsetting of apple carts, my late uncle, or the fragile health of the euro? What is happening now is threatening to tip over the fragile comity of the eurozone (the apple cart), and therefore the quarrelsome member states themselves (remember those politicians), must not disrupt the work of useful bodies and agencies such as EMSA, which is itself an apple cart. What’s more, it’s OUR apple cart.

Anyone who ever had to deal with certain national governments after an incident at sea can attest to the need for, and value of a pan-European maritime safety agency. The process of getting agreement, at the IMO, on accepted principles for co-operation between port states, coastal states and flag states, simply on co-operation in conducting maritime investigations,was, before the advent of EMSA, like undergoing root canal surgery without anesthetic.

In Europe at least, EMSA has made a successful start on a harmonized system of maritime safety throughout the EU. If you wish to test how well off we are, please note the troubles that Mr. Kallas, the EU Transport Commissioner, is now having trying to unscramble the bloc’s dangerously chaotic air-traffic system. And do thank those politicians for creating EMSA.

He had perceived that seafarers, who only ever seemed to be noticed by landsmen when something had gone badly wrong, deserved some recognition, especially for some of the quite amazing things that they do in the hostile environment in which they work.

This year, the first day of the 27^th IMO Assembly, along with some heavy diplomatic representation, was treated to a truly amazing true tale of courage, with the award being presented to Captain Seog Hae-gyun, who had been master of the chemical tanker Samho Jewelry when she was seized by a large gang of Somali pirates. The crew had been in their designated citadel, but the pirates had broken in and detained them on the bridge of the ship which they ordered to be taken to the Somali coast.

The Republic of Korea master had other ideas, and in an effort to delay progress of the vessel so that Korean Navy vessels might catch up and attempt a rescue, he undertook all manner of highly risky strategems, such as steering a zig-zag course, interfering with the fuel mixture so that the engine misfired, pretending the steering gear was broken and slowing the ship down to six knots. Ordered to communicate to the owners in English, he surreptitiously inserted information in Korean about the true situation, hugely assisting the pursuing naval units. But the pirates realised that they were being duped and viciously attacked the master, causing serious fractures to his shoulders and legs.

Eventually as dawn broke on the second day of their captured passage, the ROK destroyer Choi Young launched their rescue operation and quickly captured most of the ship. However three armed pirates remained in the wheelhouse, and despite his serious injuries the master managed to get to the VHF and warn the rescuers of the dangers they still faced. Furious, the pirates shot the master four times, two bullets hitting him in the abdomen, as the bridge was stormed.

Eight pirates were killed and five captured in the operation but the master, near to death, was rushed ashore, first to Oman and then to his home country, where he underwent major surgery over an extensive period. As he accepted his award in London, ten months after the outrage, he still required a cane to help him walk.

Captain Seog did what he believed was best to protect his crew and his ship and very nearly died at the hands of these criminals who are making seafarers’ lives so difficult. He is a true hero of our times. There were also 38 different nominations for the award, which seems to show that there is still a great deal of courage being shown by people at sea. It is just that the Award helps to illuminate it all, for everyone’s benefit.

And so, on August 4, we are confronted with a modern version of the same story, reported from India.  The Pavit, a tanker supposedly registered in Panama, is said to have run aground near Juhu on the west coast of India.

It appears – though reports are somewhat sketchy, as they always are – that the Pavit drifted between 800 and 900 nautical miles after being abandoned, for some reason, off the coast of Oman.  It appears that the Pavit drifted for about two weeks following the alleged abandonment, and at some point was “reported sunk”.

Imagine the surprise of the Indian authorities, including the Ministry of Defence, when the Pavit turned up. A Directorate-General of Shipping inquiry has reportedly been convened to determine how the Pavit, without a crew, was able to penetrate the supposed security layers of the Indian Marine Police, the Coast Guard, and the Navy, and be undetected until it ran aground.

There are a few red faces in Mumbai and Delhi, particularly in light of the heightened security that has supposedly been in effect since the deadly attack of terrorists, from the sea, in Mumbai several years ago.  Not surprisingly, the vessel does not have in place protection and liability (P&I) cover.  It is not known how much oil remains aboard the vessel.

While all of this does not speak well of India’s “maritime domain awareness”, as the Coast Guard puts it, there is some doubt as to whether nations bordering on other oceans are in fact better prepared than India appears to be. Admiral Verma, the Chief of the Indian Naval Staff, has called for an investigation of why the vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) did not alert shore-based authorities as to its location, and approach to the coast.  Another question relates to the efficiency of shore-based radar.

The vulnerability of coastal areas, other than ports, to stealth attacks remains full of unanswered questions.  It is hoped that after the authorities (outside of India) stop laughing at what happened, the shortcomings of AIS, in particular, will get a closer look from the IMO and the various military authorities that are supposedly in charge of security along out coasts.

The industry wanted to do the right thing, to stop this seemingly endless bloodletting with lifeboat accidents, and to do it once and for all. The regulators, alas, went only half way, in a peculiar compromise which (to put it bluntly) will enable Death to stalk the davits until 2019!

It is, of course, self-evident that any self-respecting ship operator, who can lay hold of some expertise, and ensure that his ship’s escape apparatus is safe long before this stupid date – indeed he could be doing it right now. Ah, he might say, how do we know, without specific IMO guidance, that the gear we have is safe and will not plunge a couple of seafarers to a violent death in the near future. How do we know that the replacement mechanism is safe, and that we won’t, at some future date have to change it all again?

This is perhaps where practical seamanship, experience and expertise comes in, probably more important a contribution than the theoretical, abstract and lawyer-infested world of regulation can usually make. And if one is still doubtful, it is well worth ensuring that there is some alternative insulation in the shape of some stout wire preventers. Is it really so complicated?

The proceedings will be headed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, and the Secretary-General of the IMO, Admiral  Mitropoulos, and those invited include the Secretary-General of NATO, the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Executive Director of the World Food Programme.

It is to be hoped that something tangible and concrete will emerge from this gathering of the captains and the kings.

One positive outcome would be a specific Action Plan, containing the following things:

1. A determination that financial instruments, bank accounts and other assets used by pirates, including but not limited to ransom proceeds, will be traced and blocked, much in the manner now employed by United Nations sanctions regimes.  Surely all those ransom payments are not being buried under a lone pine tree, a la Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

2. An international Convention on the Suppression of Piracy (COSP), granting universal military and political authority to suppress piratical acts.  This instrument should include specific provision for:

• Jurisdiction in the courts of law of States Party to the Convention;

• The right to carry arms and armed guards aboard merchant vessels;

• The duty of port states and flag states to respect the right of merchant vessels, and their crews, to bear arms, in defense against pirates and similar assailants;

• The sequestration of bank accounts, financial instruments and all other tangible and intangible assets, including vessels, employed by pirates;

• The universal and inalienable right of seafarers of all nations regardless of their nationality, or of the flag states or states of registry of the vessels in which they serve, to the protection of the international community.

Articles 100 through 111 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea are valuable and important, in that they represent a basis in universally accepted international law.  In particular, Article 100, entitled “Duty to Co-operate in the Repression of Piracy”, provides as follows:

All States shall co-operate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy on the high seas or in any other place outside the jurisdiction of any State.

The long and circuitous dialogue, couched in vague and anodyne terms, to the effect that “we really should do something about piracy” has become threadbare and increasingly embarrassing. It’s time to get down to business; calls to action are fine and dandy, but the specific action to be taken is clear, apparent and long overdue.

It has many aspects in the maritime field, which like all disciplines is increasingly dependent upon sophisticated electronic navigational aids.

At the IMO, awareness of the shortcomings of global positioning systems (GPS), which have been known to err, is leading to second thoughts on the virtues of keeping supposedly obsolete systems such as E-LORAN (long-range navigation), as a backup.

While the United States has actively decommissioned E-LORAN, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) has been understandably, and I think wisely, reluctant to do so. E-LORAN is still in operation in European waters.

Lurking behind this gentle difference of opinion is a larger question. The onrush of technological change sometimes leads to difficult decisions, and not necessarily the right ones. It falls to the IMO to sort out the obsolete, the obsolescent, and the still useful and even necessary. In the field of navigational safety, these decisions can have consequences.

Recently – and, again, the Deepwater Horizon comes to mind – a debate has raged on the effect of private-sector budgetary constraints on maritime safety.

A parallel issue, however, is the money that governments spend, or decide to no longer spend, on such systems as E-LORAN.

The venerable North Atlantic Ice Patrol, and the extent of its international support, comes to mind in this context.

Life is all about making decisions, such as tossing out an old pair of shoes that might still have some use in them.  Are we agreed that satellite-based navigation systems are so infallibly excellent that a redundancy backup in the form of E-LORAN can be discarded?

There have been a number of recent incidents that suggest that the answer is no. More and more, reliability as well as accuracy is vital for determining and maintaining a vessel’s precise position. This is particularly important for maneuvering and stationing drilling rigs, but it clearly applies to a wide range of navigational issues. One hopes that the experts at IMO, and EMSA, will bear these concerns in mind.

The often underrated Chapter IX of the SOLAS Convention, or International Safety Management (ISM) Code, has been the product, like so many remedial projects, of accidents that changed the course of safety and quality regulation.  It has now come to the attention of the United States Congress, and may become a powerful administrative weapon.

The Code, which goes by the cumbersome name of “The International Management Code for the Safe Operation of Ships and for Pollution Prevention” was incorporated into SOLAS in 1994.

Most recently (effective July 1, 2010), it has been amended to include the concept of assessment, by the company concerned, of “…all risks to…ships, personnel and the environment, and  [establishment of] appropriate safeguards”.

Essentially, the risk management principles of ISO Standard 31000: 2009, are now virtually a part of the Code.  The significance of the Code is that SOLAS, of which it is a part, is one of those maritime conventions that the United States has in fact ratified, and, because SOLAS is a part of the basic treaty law of all maritime nations, the most recent amendments lend themselves to universal application by means of domestic enforcement in each country.

The recent revision to the ISM Code now spells out what was always implied, but never stated: a requirement for companies to assess the risks to their vessels, personnel and the environment, arising from their operations.

It is clear that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be a powerful lever in imposing a more formalised system of risk assessment, along the lines spelled out in ISM.  In fact, the most recent amendments, which were laid down in IMO Resolution MSC.273 (85), in December, 2008, may well be strengthened in light of the events of April 20.

One part of the amendment, constituting Section 1.2.2, calls upon each company to “assess all identified risks to its ships, personnel and the environment and establish appropriate safeguards”.  ISM therefore has a formal structure of risk assessment, now in place.  Shipowners – including MODU operators – may excusably think that this doesn’t change much.  However, ISM auditors, port states and flag state administrations must, effective 1 July of this year, determine that risk assessment procedures are in place – documented and fully operational.

In the United States, this can have consequences that go beyond the ISM Code.  The U.S. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) does not specifically provide (yet) that failure to comply with the ISM Code will constitute a violation.  Congress has only just begun the messy process of reacting to the Macondo spill in all of its hideous aspects, but preliminary legislation emanating from the House Energy and Commerce Committee includes a provision that the CEO of an oil company personally attests that it has a working blow-out preventer, and an effective spill-response plan.  In this somewhat different context, the legislators are taking a page from the Sarbanes-Oxley provisions, enacted after the Enron fiasco some years ago.

There is little doubt that, because ISM is already “on the books” virtually everywhere, it is an obvious vehicle for increasingly intrusive safety and quality management systems.

There are many ironies in what is now happening.  For some time, safety cultures in the offshore industry were the example said to be a model for tanker and other vessel operations.  The oil industry was said to have embraced the principle that the key to greater safety excellence lay in identifying, in advance, the reasons that each accident occurs.

We are now approaching the point where specific, step-by-step procedures will be monitored and graded, by external as well as internal auditors.  Seven years ago, the Nautical Institute’s Dr. Phillip Anderson, supported by Captains Stuart Nicholls, John Wright and Sean Noonan, wrote a book entitled “Cracking the Code: The Relevance of the ISM Code and its Impact on Shipping Practices”.  Capt. Nicholls comments, in his description of the oil industry:

“To have an operational safety system following documented  procedures is one goal but to have a safety culture is quite another.   Having the desire, courage, fortitude and ability to nurture a safety culture is the key to managing not only safety but also the entire business.”

The history of the ISM Code was pointed out, at a reception launching “Cracking the Code”, at the International Maritime Organisation, in October of 2003.  Capt. R. B. Middleton, then the President of the Nautical Institute, observed that the tragic explosion and fire on the oil platform Piper Alpha in the North Sea, in July, 1988, was one of the birth pangs of safety management systems.  It is interesting, and sad, that another offshore tragedy has occurred at the moment when risk management is coming into its own as a doctrinal part of international maritime law.