I am currently in Abu Dhabi where I have had the pleasure to take part in a conference about the Maritime Environment and the role Flag states will play in the implementation of the new IMO regulations i.e the new Audit Scheme.
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There are some 64 fortunate people around today, who survived the sinking in the South Atlantic of the Canadian operated sail training ship Concordia, which it is assumed was knocked down in a squall in heavy weather. Excellent coverage of this can be found at our friends,
Sea-fever and
Amver.
Somebody did something right with their evacuation plans to ensure that the 44 students and their instructors abandoned the ship safely, as she lay on her beam ends before sinking.
Training and discipline might have helped. Top marks to their rescuers aboard the woodchip carriers Hokuetsu Delight and Crystal Pioneer, and the LNGC Sestao Knutsen, along with the co-ordinating Brazilian SAR teams, in an operation which saw the entire 64 fished out of their rafts from a sea described as…
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In June, delegates to the Revision Conference of the International Maritime Organisation on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping will meet in Manila to take up 13 draft resolutions dealing with such issues as recruitment and retention, crewing levels, and the like.
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In the run-up to the STCW Conference in Manila this June, India has proposed that there be mandatory space for training berths provided on all new ships. This will be one of the more heated issues to be discussed. Additional space to accommodate trainee cadets (which might become mandatory) is seemingly attractive, in light of the IMO’s current “Go to Sea” campaign. But there are, as is so often the case, ramifications.
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In his New Year’s message, inaugurating 2010 as the Year of the Seafarer, Admiral Efthimios Mitropoulos, Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), identified three goals for the year:
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Experience has taught us that most casualties are cause by a human agency. It is possible that we need to train seafarers to handle different tasks in a different way. The use of lifesaving equipment is one example.
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Whilst this blogging game is pretty new to me, I have been delighted to see the growing number of comments that have come from serving Masters and seafarers and welcome further response in addition to the comments we have already received.
One of our objectives is to encourage discussion of maritime safety and training of seafarers, and the best way to do this is to communicate with all of you on a daily basis. To enhance training advocacy, we need your input. Keep it coming!
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“It is a sad indicator that there is a need to introduce a Maritime Labour Convention that, in the main, deals with the basic employment rights of a seafarer and his living conditions on board. Is that as far as we have come......” Captain Robert Ferguson, of Gulf Energy Maritime, who wrote these words in the
latest Nautical Institute’s International Maritime Human Element Bulletin Alert! probably makes many of his readers feel a little uncomfortable.
He points out that if a shipowner wants to sleep well at night and not worry about what on earth might be happening to his ship, it is attention to the human element that will provide this satisfying slumber.
He suggests that changes are needed to the way that seafarers are regarded by their employers, and…
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After several thousand years of training seafarers, one would think that mankind had some sort of a system in mind. Surprisingly, there is no formal training-at-sea system.
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When the Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on November 27, 2007, in a heavy fog, it became an exhibit in the ongoing debate about the importance of crew qualifications.
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