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.

The artifacts that survive, and therefore mark the wrecks, are usually amphorae, the ceramic cargo containers used over millennia.  The technology used to explore the ocean floor for ancient wrecks is also effective in the search for natural resources on the ocean floor.

E/V Nautilus is one of the boldest and most advanced working ships in existence. The crew are a mix of youthful geologists, biologists and archaeologists; you can follow their activities on Nautilus Live. We’re advancing on wrecks off the Datcha peninsula, which projects into the southern Aegean. It is an ancient and modern resting place of sunken ships, and provides a cross-section of merchant shipping since the earliest stirrings of civilized man.

Oceanic depths, such as the Aegean, are largely unexplored beyond shallows accessible to regional SCUBA divers.  The regions off the Bodrum and Datcha Peninsulas have long been centers of human activity, from the earliest times.  They are there for an understanding of ancient and modern submarine landscapes.

Over the past four years, the Nautilus has been engaged in documenting areas of coastal deepwater (50-600 meters) with sophisticated acoustic and visual imaging systems.

Carleen Lyden-Kluss and I, as trustees of the Sea Research Foundation, were excited to be able to participate in Nautilus’ work for about a week.
The technology deployed from Nautilus, including the remotely operated vehicles Hercules and Argus, comprise systems specifically designed for deepwater exploration.

Hercules and Argus are state-of-the-art deep-sea robotic vehicle systems capable of exploring depths up to 4000 meters. Each remotely operated vehicle (ROV) has its own suite of cameras and sensors that receive electrical power from the surface through a fiber-optic cable, which also transmits data and video. Engineers and scientists command the vehicles from a control room aboard Nautilus, with some dives lasting more than three days.

Argus was first launched in 2000 and was soon followed by Hercules in 2003.  The systems are versatile, capable of supporting a wide range of oceanographic instrumentation and sampling equipment.  They have surveyed ancient shipwrecks, discovered hydrothermal vents, and recovered lost equipment in oceans and seas around the world. Several smaller remote systems complement Hercules and Argus for various exploration objectives.

The Institute for Exploration, a division of  Sea Research Foundation and based in Connecticut, is led by Dr. Robert D. Ballard, who was responsible for locating and exploring the wreck of RMS Titanic more than twenty years ago.  One of its major functions is the education of young people in a broad range of outreach programs, supported by Nautilus Live, making it possible for everyone to follow the deepsea exploration efforts of Nautilus, as though all of us, wherever we are located, are aboard the ship, interactively sitting with the members of the command/control center.

After the discovery of the wreck of Titanic, Dr. Ballard, in 1989, founded the JASON Project, now also part of Sea Research Foundation.  The purpose of JASON is to make use of the growing interest in ocean exploration on the part of school children across the United States, and, soon, around the world.  Since its inception, the JASON Project, in partnership with the National Geographic Society, has motivated millions of young students with the excitement of scientific exploration and discovery.

Using the cutting-edge research and researchers within the private sector and at federal research laboratories – JASON pursues its mission systematically through an inquiry-based curriculum and a global online community.

The program has won acclaim for its innovative use of telepresence technology to create a “being there” experience through satellite broadcasts from remote expeditions – and even more so for taking students and their teachers into the field to experience oceanographic research first-hand. This immersive field experience is accompanied by a variety of curriculum units aligned to national science standards, promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills, sorely needed in today’s school environments.

The JASON project is founded on the principle that scientists can and should be presented as great positive role models for children.
Students can be inspired with the desire to learn, and many will go on to make science and related disciplines part of their career or education plans.

The work of Dr. Ballard and his team has, as you might realize, practical applications.  Nautilus is equipped to find chimney vents, “black smokers”, and “white smokers”, which are hydrothermal vents rich in strategically important minerals and sulfides. They occur wherever there is enough heat and porosity to drive hydrothermal convection, such as in certain parts of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  Active submarine volcanoes in the centers of tectonic plates also host hydrothermal vents. Loihi, a mid-plate hot-spot volcano that will eventually emerge as a new Hawaiian island, is one of the best-studied seamount/hydrothermal examples.

Other hydrothermally active seamounts that have been explored are Pito Seamount near the East Pacific Rise at 22 degrees south, and Peep’s Seamount in the Bering Sea. The vast economic potential for subsurface/seabed mineral and biological exploitation (not a politic turn of phrase, but there you are) has been increasingly clear since the discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in 1977.

By wonderful coincidence the breakthrough was made by the research vessel Knorr, 9000 feet above the Galapagos Rift in the eastern Pacific, 200 miles north of the Galapagos Islands, where Dr. Darwin landed in September, 1835 and changed our understanding of life on Earth.
We are, in late August of 2011, aboard Nautilus in part to learn where technology has gone since 1977.

Economically and politically, the oceans are often called our “last frontier”. There are of course a number of “last frontiers”.  The assault on this one has many intriguing dimensions.

The seminar will take place on May 23^rd at the National Press Club in Washington DC commencing at 3:00pm.  The seminar is also  intended to commemorate National Maritime Day, which is held on May 22^nd to honor merchant mariners.

We have assembled a unique panel which includes RADM Kevin Cook, USCG;  RADM Robert North (Ret.), North Star Maritime; Jonathan Waldron, Blank Rome LLP; Greg DeMarco, ExxonMobil; RADM Paul Zukunft, USCG; the Rev. Mary Davisson, Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center; the Rev. Canon James Von Dreele, Seamen’s Church Institute-Philadelphia and Mauricio Garrido from the American Salvage Association.

We have designed this seminar to be both informative and participatory so that the risk of an event such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill recurring can be reduced and I also feel that we must also look at seafarer welfare.

Piracy is on the rise.  Lifeboat safety hook failures are on the rise.  Seafarer fatigue is on the rise.  I hope that the seminar will explore strategies and realities to mitigate future risks.

Immediately after the seminar is the National Maritime Day Dinner and AMVER Awards where 77 shipping companies will be recognized with Congressman Frank LoBiondo as our honoured guest.

I hope you can join us and visit the Namepa website to find more details on how to attend.

As usual the debate was highly engaging, but I would like to share some thoughts I put to the forum from my own unique crystal ball on how we can start to make the seafarer’s lot a far more happier one.

As we well know unfair treatment of seafarers continues to be a global problem, and one of major concern. The quality of life of seafarers has very significant impact not only on the seafarers themselves, but the fate of our efforts to attract young people to the profession.

While IMO’s “Year of the Seafarer”, last year, was of great value, issues such as port and terminal access (denial of shore leave), criminalisation, retroactive enactment of legislation, employment and entry visa restrictions, unfair presumptions of guilt, and aggressive counterterrorism practices, not to mention piracy and other physical threats, have discouraged recruitment and training efforts, and been harmful to the image of shipping as whole.

The fundamental principle of UNCLOS Article 230, barring States from imprisoning seafarers onboard foreign vessels except in cases of wilful and serious acts of pollution within their territorial waters, is not always respected.

The IMO/ILO guidelines for fair treatment of seafarers are essential in promoting a better regime, but these are unhappily not always respected.  In 2010, the IMO’s Casualty Investigation Code, which contains mandatory provisions on how evidence is to be obtained from seafarers, represents a welcomed development.  The new Maritime Labour Convention contains an obligation for governments to hold an official inquiry into any serious marine casualty leading to injury or loss of life, and to co-operate with other States to facilitate such an investigation.

In June 2010, the IMO approved the “Manila Amendments” to the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW).  The Manila Amendments will enter into force on 1 January 2012.

The updated STCW reflects and requires new training procedures to meet the automated and technologically advanced work environment experienced by today’s seafarers.  The changes include new mandatory education and training of electro-technical officers, and of able-bodied seafarers on deck and in the engine room.  They also require new courses for seafarers on oil, chemical and gas tankers as a precondition for licensing.  Existing competence requirements have been updated, enabling officers to use new equipment such as ECDIS, and special training for offshore supply and support vessels has been added.  Provisions have been added on the issue of fitness for duty of watchkeepers, and new requirements on alcohol and drug abuse.

It is important to remember that while there have been no recent high-profile cases like the HEBEI SPIRIT or PRESTIGE, the underlying problems afflicting the human element in our business have not gone away.

However, at the recent Connecticut Maritime Association trade fair and annual meeting, and at the IMO, startling, hopeful and
positive signs of spring have been visible.

At CMA, amid the various booths, stands and shipbrokers, and endless chatter on piracy, there appeared two new and inspiring things: the maritime training school in Simonstown South Africa (proper name: the Lawhill
Maritime Centre) and the cadets of the Baltimore, Maryland Harbour School
(or to give it its correct name, the Maritime Industry Academy).

At the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), and in Malmo, Sweden, the World Maritime University opened in 1983, has established itself as a unique and internal maritime post-graduate maritime university.

But it has experienced developmental growing pains; most of these have concerned budgets and funding.

Like the schools in South Africa and Baltimore, its focus is on education of our future maritime leaders. All three are “opportunity schools”, offering a very big chance for the young and the
hungry — and the first two to those born many miles from the nearest
silver spoon.

Attendees at CMA had the chance to see a deeply moving presentation by Capt. Brian Ingpen of the Simonstown Maritime Centre. He described how Safmarine, aided by the financial backing of the TK Foundation, created under the will of the late Torben Karlshoej, established a maritime academy near the site of the famous Simonstown naval base; a guiding spirit has been Sean Day,
Chairman of Teekay Corporation, who was born a South African.

The cadet students are largely from black townships like Soweto, or rural districts in the Cape, or the Johannesburg area. The school programme has changed many
lives. Capt. Ingpen showed pictures of perhaps forty alumni, describing
their backgrounds and what has happened to them since they began work.
The dramatic part: by their own hard work, and the education they received at the school, from hopelessness and destitution, many have already gone on to success at sea and ashore.

You, as they say, had to be there. Capt. Ingpen is a quietly dynamic and inpirational speaker.

As he ended, some of the audience were choked up; Nicholas Pappadakis, Chairman of Intercargo,
remarked: “Well, what’s all this about shipping’s bad image?”

What, indeed. One wonders whether the Karlshoej daughters, or Mr. Day, or
Capt. Ingpen, who are truly among the Great and Good, will ever receive
award at the Guildhall — you know, one of those things with the Princess
Royal, state trumpeters and the rest.

The student cadets from the Baltimore Harbour School (truthfulness requires
that I disclose that I’m an advisor) also gave us a chance to reveal the
better angels of our industry’s nature.

At the CMA, Admiral Robert Papp, the
Coast Guard Commandant, who was guest speaker at the WISTA lunch, took the cadets under his wing, as did my colleague, Carleen Lyden-Kluss.

He spent time with them, spoke to them, and gave each a U. S. Coast Guard commemorative medallion.

These young people, all under the age of 17, and from extremely underprivileged backgrounds in one of America’s most impoverished cities, were, for a day, able to glimpse a better and much more hopeful future.

The World Maritime University, established in Malmo, has been known, probably to its disadvantage, as an antechamber to shore-based bureaucratic jobs, largely in developing countries.

Its present President, Dr. Bjorn
Kjerfve, is implanting a bolder sense of direction, one that emphasizes
advanced maritime education and research, support for the work programme of IMO, and — always a sensitive subject — increased funding.

Notwithstanding rumours of vulnerability on this score, the University ended 2010 with a
balanced budget.

The issue of WMU’s funding remains an issue of prime importance, but it is clear that there is a growing sense of optimism about WMU at the IMO and within its administration.

A total of 224 new students enrolled in the postgraduate programmes at WMU
this past year (2010), compared with 196 in 2009.

This number included the
largest-ever number of women (32); the largest number of students (42)
funded by their employer; and a total increase in student enrollment of 36%
over the previous year.

At the end of next year, the WMU will move into the expanded and distinctive Old Harbourmaster’s Building in Malmo, which is something special.

Against these “green shoots”, problems remain. The University lacks an endowment, and must live on its annual income, a subsidy from the generous Swedish government, and a “nonrecurrent” contribution from the IMO.

Moreover, as the creation of an agency of the United Nations, it lacks a
national identity, which means, oddly, that it is not an accredited
institution.

These deficiencies are high on Dr. Kjaerfve’s “to do” list. But
as an institution that has brought an analytical, yet practical teaching
discipline to students who previously had little hope of advanced maritime
training, WMU is a remarkable success, and its survival over the years is a great feather in IMO’s cap.

With two of its biggest donors, Norway and France withdrawing (hopefully temporarily) and the world in a financial crisis, it is naive to suggest that this institution should in some way to be isolated from the real world.

It has, of course, been here before, and at no time during its history can it be said that the WMU has been financially secure.

It has always been vulnerable, not least because of its size, and the perpetual uncertainty of its financial backing. The wonder is that it has been able to do so much, and so effectively, with so little. There are now some 2800 graduates out there in the wider world, and the maritime world is a better place because of them and what they learned during their stints in Malmo.

Certain folk with forked tongues have never been entirely convinced of the rationale developed by its founders, suggesting that what WMU could be done perfectly successfully in the technical institutions or post-graduate courses available in their own countries. Perhaps there is some validity in their claims, but it is difficult to conceive how the mechanism for assisting students from those very nations that the WMU is designed to empower could be replicated in a meaningful fashion.

The Achilles heel of the WMU, from the moment it was approved by the IMO has been its funding. Not for the first time was a really splendid initiative by the international community handicapped by the fact that while there was tremendous “moral” support for the institution, when the plate was passed around, the hands of most of the distinguished delegates stayed in their pockets.

And with a few exceptions, they have remained there and too much effort of the WMU management, which arguably could have been better spent in academic pursuits, has been occupied with fund raising. The industry, once again with a few exceptions, has exhibited its traditional role of clapping its hands to avoid writing the cheques.

The WMU is an excellent institution, and to visit it is to be genuinely inspired by its international ethos, high academic standards and the quality of the people who attend. It delivers a great deal with a very small budget, which if spread more widely across those nations which have a vested interest in its success (and that means all of us), would be no big deal. There is surely an opportunity to do something about this lamentable situation, which might stop these periodic crises and fund it properly with a levy on all IMO members. Why is that so hard?

There was nothing personal about this. I was merely the junior of four apprentices and he affected never to notice any of us, communicating his wishes via a certificated officer viz – “tell that bloody apprentice to get out of this wheelhouse, Mister!”

I didn’t hold it against him either, assuming that this was how shipmasters, from the heights of their exalted rank, always behaved. On my next voyage, with a master who was a rather more approachable person, and who took a close interest in the education of apprentices, I nearly died of fright when this person wearing four rings on his sleeve, actually spoke to me.

But on those ships there were invariably four apprentices, who stuck together and a crew which, barring the odd Gaelic speaker, spoke English as their first language. What would it be like to be one of two first trip cadets from the UK on a ship where the language of the ship was not English. It must have been like suddenly being plonked down on a different planet, but it is not too rare these days, British crews being like hen’s teeth.

I was speaking to seven Maritime London Cadets this week, in London to meet the trustees of this excellent scheme to encourage British seafaring. We asked those of them with sea time behind them whether they had any really negative experiences to report.

One of them had been given a hard time by a Ukranian master of his “British” ship, while another said that the inability to communicate with the rest of the crew was the most unpleasant part of his initial experience. Interestingly, both were hugely positive about their subsequent experiences.

These were well educated young people, attracted to the sea and enthusiastic about the shipping industry, but I just wondered how I would have fared if there was barely a soul aboard  my first ship who was able to talk to me. It’s the way of the world in our globalised merchant navies with the owners chasing lowest costs, and the flag on the stern becoming irrelevant, but it would be interesting to see whether there is unnecessary wastage as a result of posting young cadets to ships full of what are, to them, foreigners.  Any thoughts?

As he put it, “We need to make sure young people look at the industry with different eyes…criminalisation and piracy may be much more tangible issues, but this goes to the heart of what we are trying to offer them in terms of training, and a career in shipping.”

In his March 11 interview, Mr. Giorgi harkened back to “the early 1980s, when vessels were built with officers’ wardrooms, gyms, and pools.  But that era ended.  By the turn of the millennium, we were having to place cadets in ones and twos.  It is still the case today.”

He notes that in a company that has 1,244 cadets, almost 500 of whom are doing sea training at any one time, most are now serving singly on ships that his company has under full management — about half of its 1,000-ship roster.

Mr. Giorgi has called for compulsory facilities onboard for cadets, “through mandatory regulation, not just stronger guidelines.”

He has stated that as president of Intermanager, the global vessel managers’ organisation, he intends to press for new rules on ship design with the other major industry associations.

Peter Cremers, the CEO of Hong Kong-based Anglo-Eastern Group, who has long been a crusader for higher standards of quality, made a statement on February 2 that his company would manage a training ship free of charge, and that it would urge its stakeholders and other shipowners to provide more places for cadets aboard their vessels.

In point of fact, cadet programmes have proven to be very productive of “lifetime” career seafarers.  Mr. Giorgi’s interview with John McLaughlin of Lloyd’s List explains why: as Keith Parsons, who is now V.Group’s director of human resources, points out, “through the 1970s and the early 1980s, a lot of shipping companies operated similar schemes.

From a training point of view, sessions in the onboard classroom would be followed by practical sessions during ship operations: an explanation of a cargo discharging plan made real by a period understudying an officer on cargo watch, or a navigation class followed by a first sight on the bridge.”

In my opinion, the views of Messrs. Giorgi and Cremers are persuasive.  The 1969 Tonnage Convention should be amended to exclude cadet accommodations from overall GRT calculations.  Other incentives favouring the onboard training of cadets should also be considered, and adopted with all deliberate speed.

It would also be helpful to hear from our venerable shipping organisations, other than Intermanager, on what constructive proposals they wish to make to further the training of the next generation of seafarers.  If they do not wish to make such proposals, it would be interesting to hear from their leaders why Mr. Giorgi, Mr. Cremers and I (and a host of others) are mistaken.

We never seem to get to the “what” that needs to be done.  Here are a few suggestions:

1.  Improve the quality of crew accommodations aboard ship;

2. Provide broadband access to seafarers (aboard ship);

3.  Develop and provide advanced training and continued education programmes, available via the internet, at a nominal cost;

4.  Revise existing conventions, such as Loadline, ILO and even SOLAS, to provide a seafarers’ quality dimension.

We speak, also, of the need for higher levels of quality, and of the “human element.”  Getting to that higher level of quality has a lot to do with the fact that the lowest possible cost of labour aboard ship is an important factor in making a profit.  As long as the cheapest possible labour cost, the smallest and sparest accommodation, and other factors mentioned above, remain a critical element of operating cost, it is easy to see why higher levels of quality and training continue to elude us.

One well-known example is the continued inclusion of crew accommodations in the overall gross tonnage of a ship, thus providing an incentive to reduce the size of such accommodations to the greatest possible extent.

Efforts have been made over the years to eliminate this factor, which contributes to higher port dues and charges based upon a vessel’s GRT.  Since cargo space cannot be profitably reduced, the tonnage allocable to the crew is the only place that cuts can be made.  Strange, isn’t it, that this little problem never gets mentioned at the much-touted and self-congratulatory conferences and beanfeasts that mark the passage of each shipping calendar year!

It is also strange, at least to me, that something as obvious as ongoing training does not play a bigger part in the STCW Convention and the ISM Code.  Both conventions deal with quality, and in both conventions, as well as elsewhere, the seafarer — yes, in this “Year of the Seafarer” — should be singled out for relevant and meaningful treatment.

However, yet another symposium on piracy (about which nothing is being done, either) is ever so much easier.

Commenting about “system design and integration”, he suggested that much of what was being inflicted on the industry, and indeed the hapless folk at sea who were required to make it all work, was somewhat unmanageable.

You can see where he is coming from, when a relief chief engineer drafted in to replace the ship’s regular officer who had been forced to take unscheduled leave, was unable to comprehend the highly sophisticated control system, when alarms started to go off in all directions, and the engine started to effectively manage itself. Crunch!

Oh dear, where did we go wrong? And the point was that while the regular chief engineer had been given the best possible briefing in the machinery of the ship he had taken from the shipyard, nobody else had. Ship and machinery specific training is now that crucial.

It’s not the first time such a thing has happened. Who recalls the damage done by the ship which decided to go shopping in New Orleans after the engine management system developed an independent spirit quite beyond the capabilities of the ship’s staff.

Bernard Twomey identified a number of areas which he thinks are “unique to the maritime industry”, which are not a matter where breasts should swell with pride. He points to “fragmented links between stakeholders”, the fact that suppliers have poor visibility, while the specification process leaves much to be desired. System weaknesses emerge from such problems.

He recommends a more thorough system of hazard investigation, stressing the importance of human engineering and taking account of the skill set of the operator. We need to know, as we contemplate the lovely consoles and amazing controls in some new ocean greyhound – “what can go wrong when something breaks”. We should also learn rather more from what they do in other industries. A safety case, he says is fine, but real “assurance” is better.

What a sensible approach. But will it happen, as long as we source equipment and components from wherever they are cheapest, and the shipbuilder operates a “take it or pay a lot extra” approach over the specification of the new ship? We will need a step-change in procurement attitudes and processes, if we are to see genuine improvement.