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.

It was masterfully summed up in the Business Times of Singapore by its correspondent David Hughes, who noted the various reactions which ranged from that of the Anglo-Dutch officers union Nautilus, whose spokesman described the agreement on hours of work and rest as something of a sell-out, to the International Shipping Federation, which seemed to consider the same as a reasonable compromise.

David, who is a master mariner,  also pointed out the fact that nobody seems yet willing to tackle the problem of utterly exhausted master/mate teams in hard worked European ships, despite the numbers of accidents that have occurred where people have fallen asleep at the critical moment.

It is difficult to establish a reasonable balance from these different poles of opinion, with a fairly difficult debate revolving around what constitutes a “reasonable exception” to hours of work and rest regulations.

Clearly, if the safety of the ship is going to be compromised if the crew won’t get out of their bunks, citing their excessive hours, such a refusal might be considered unreasonable. But if the crew is only just numerous enough to keep the hours of work/rest legal in the most favourable circumstances, then is not the employer pushing his luck to demand more from the hard pressed seafarers? If the “compromise” agreed in Manila is to work properly, then there is good faith required from all sides.

Curiously, the Manila conference could, in some respects, be regarded as a mite premature. Sure, there is much disquiet about the seafarer’s working week, and whether sufficient is being done to prevent fatigue-induced accidents, but equally there is important research being done which ought to throw a bit more light and science on the reality of fatigue and stress aboard hard worked ships in intensive operations, that ought to bear upon a more mature approach to manpower levels aboard ship.

Warsash and Chalmers Universities are wiring up officers on simulators for days on end to get some real facts about how people operate.  Of course employers want to keep their costs down, just as employees would like to be paid more for less work. Human nature wants more beer in bigger glasses.

But there is a desperate need to address the realities of risk, with ships being manned to the absolute minimum, and no account taken of the human cost in terms of long-term health of excessively hard working individuals, such as senior officers. We may be a little short of this appalling phenomenon identified in Japan of people quite literally working themselves to death, but we really should not be heading in this direction. Some common sense in terms of providing adequate manpower for the work that needs to be done is long overdue.

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.

He is also right to point out the unwelcome guest at this particular feast, namely the ongoing problem of hours of rest and work. Fatigue, on many types of ship, is a major problem, if not an absolute scandal, one that could rebound upon the industry , much as did its use of asbestos, if the premature death of seafarers can be associated with their working practices, which is not without the realms of possibility.

But almost as important is the failure to accept that in the 21st century, it is no longer acceptable to have exhausted people, whose brains are barely functioning, controlling enormous mobile pieces of machinery operating in a hostile environment. It is unacceptable in the skies, on the roads, in factories and in public transport, and it remains a matter of some curiosity that a similar attitude does not prevail on the seas.

How can we recruit and train seafarers, asked Clay, with the right qualifications for an increasingly demanding job? Perhaps, if the “right qualifications” include an ability to do without almost any sleep, that is one thing! But, at the end of the day, if we are able only to recruit people who will tolerate life at sea because they have no other choice of occupation, we will have signally failed.

The operation of ships is essential work, it can be rewarding, interesting and challenging. It can lead to other exciting employment in the maritime industries, offer early responsibilities and decent pay. So one ought not to have any hesitation in recommending seafaring to any bright young person.

But when the same intelligent potential recruit asks you what the working hours are in seafaring, what on earth do you answer? “Go on-stop on” might have been an adequate answer some years ago, when children were being sent down mines and up chimneys.

You can burble on at length about the fact that ships run 24/7, but when you reveal, hesitatingly, that the maximum working hours are being dramatically reduced from 98 to 91 hours per week, you might be prepared for a sudden reduction in the interest in a sea career being evidenced by the inquirer.

Just as young people in the 21st century are unprepared to be unable to communicate with their friends for weeks on end, because a shipowner cannot provide them with internet facilities, so they will have similar intolerance of what seemed tolerable to a stoic older generation.

Which means that if we are to have safe ships, operated by the best seafarers available, we have to start manning them with an adequacy of seafarers, not some crazed notional number inscribed on a “safe” manning certificate, or the least we can get away with.

Significant questions include whether to adopt:

• New certification requirements for able seafarer, deck and engine;

• New requirements for security training;

• Specific rules aimed at preventing certificate fraud;

• Possible audit requirements to confirm compliance with the STCW Convention;

• New standards for vessel traffic services training;

• On board accommodation requirements for cadets / trainees;

• Medical fitness standards;

• Additional regulations for prevention of drug and alcohol abuse; and

• As mentioned, crewing level adjustments.

The modified STCW Convention will definitely introduce international training and certification rules for electro-technical officers, at so-called “operational” and “support” levels.

However, no agreement has been reached, in advance of the Manila Conference, on proposals to harmonise STCW rules on watchkeepers’ hours of rest with the ILO 2006 Convention’s limits on working hours.  The proposed alignment would reduce the maximum working week from 98 to 91 hours.

I’ve been to these conferences before, notably the 1995 Revision held in London.  The important thing is:  not to lose site of the important issues.  The luxuriant underbrush of technical details and political agendas, not to mention the everpresent issue of cost, tends to obscure the issue of “safer ships, cleaner seas,” in other words, what people call “quality.”

How can we help the seafarer do a better job?

How can we make the seafarer’s job safer?

How can we recruit, and train, seafarers with the right qualifications for an increasingly demanding job?

How can we better address the overriding need for a cleaner and greener, as well as a safer marine environment?

The human element is by common acknowledgement the dominant factor in all this.  Training and education are a crucial part in dealing with these issues, and improving the status of the seafarer in this “Year of the Seafarer.”  Industry leaders like Peter Cremers, Chief Executive Officer of Anglo-Eastern Group in Hong Kong, have taken a stand on the need for better education practices.  Mr. Cremers has pledged, in particular, to manage a training ship free of charge, whilst urging shipowners to provide more places for cadets aboard their vessels.  This is clearly the right spirit, and deserves our loud applause.

In the same spirit, let us hope that the delegates in Manila will remember the importance of training and recruitment to the future of our trade.

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.

For example, cadets training at sea are subject to the Maritime Labour Convention of 2006.  They are also said to be prone (at least in the U.S.) to personal injury problems.

There are also said to be “tonnage penalties” that may result from a requirement of additional cadet accommodation spaces.

So, “ramifications” is another word for “cost.”

Some countries encourage or require a term of cadet training at sea.  Others define “sea training” as a longer period of time, depending on the certificate to be awarded.

At the bottom of it all is the question” who pays to train the aspiring seafarer?  How much should training cost, overall?  Many owners see the mandatory carriage of trainees as requiring an expensive revision to the accommodation spaces volumetric parameters of the 1969 Tonnage Measurement Convention.

It is likely that the Manila Diplomatic Conference will adopt a “recommendatory” resolution on carriage of trainees.  India would like to exempt trainee accommodation spaces from tonnage calculations for newbuildings.  As the Beatles sang long ago, in what has become the unofficial anthem of the IMO,

“Life is very short, and there’s no time…Try to see it my way, Do I have to keep on talking, Till I can’t go on? While you see it your way, Run the risk of knowing. That our love may soon be gone.”

The name of the song?  “We can work it out.”

That would be wonderful!