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Happy New Year
Let’s face it, the year hasn’t started that well, with news that Somali pirates launched into 2010 with a flurry of attacks, hijacking two ships in the Gulf of Aden on New Year’s Day, including a British-flagged car carrier and a Singaporean chemical tanker.
A total of four ships were taken in a five day period last week, and so here we are a new year, a new decade…but (aside from piracy), what will it all mean for our dear shipping industry?
Ten years ago shipping entered the new millennium at the start of a journey which peaked with record busting profits, a scramble to find new ships, and panic to get people to man them. Today, as we enter the new decade there is fear in the air – many new ships are destined for an ignominious start to life, being horse traded and perhaps even laid up, there are signs of companies going to the wall and the niceties of the profession are laid bare against the reality of people simply wishing to keep their jobs.
Let us pray that the bad times are at their zenith, and that slowly we can regain a little confidence and positivism into the future.
We wish you a very happy, safe and productive New Year – and thank you for your continued support.
Shiptalk.com…………………reading you loud and clear!
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HEADLINE
Special Year
2010 is set to be a very special year, as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has deigned to have a period saluting the world’s 1.5m seafarers. The “Year of the Seafarer”, is set to highlight the unique, and all too often over-looked, contribution seafarers make.
IMO secretary general Efthimios Mitropoulos said the Year is about sending a clear message to seafarers that the entire shipping community “understands and cares” about them.
Mr Mitropoulos said in an open letter to all seafarers. “we seek to reassure you, at the ‘sharp end’ of the industry, that we, who are responsible for the international regulatory regime and who serve shipping from ashore, do understand the extreme pressures that you face and that, as a result, we approach our own tasks with a genuine sympathy for the work that you carry out”.
“We do so with deep appreciation, in recognition of the extraordinary service you render every day of your professional life, frequently under dangerous circumstances, in delivering, to the more than 6.5 billion people of the world, the wheat that makes our daily bread, the gas and oil that warms our homes or moves our vehicles”
Well that’s lovely, and we fully support and embrace the year of celebration and of the importance of recognising seafarers’ contributions to world trade. However, we can’t help but worry that this opportunity to make tangible progress may not be acted upon.
All too often such symbolic celebrations turn too easily into pure tokens of appreciation. After all it’s easy to recognise people’s troubles and sacrifices, the problems arise when you have to fix them. So we hope against hope that The Year of The Seafarer sees not simply talk, but action too.
We need to fight abandonment of seafarers, to halt criminalisation, crack down on poor living conditions, we need to fix the fatigue issue and somehow find answers to the piracy plague. Without real effort to sort the problems facing seafarers it would make the statement of understanding and empathy look a little weak.
So Happy “Year of the Seafarer” to you all.
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Female Cadets Sign Uo To Life At Sea
Female seafarers are changing the face of working at sea as more cadets decide to join the Merchant Navy.
Bibby Ship Management’s Merchant Navy cadet programme has seen increasing numbers of women sign up.
One of them, cadet Catrina Morley, joined up after graduating in Russian and Spanish. She says the training has fired her passion for a maritime life, despite never having set foot on a ship before.
She said: “My first sea phase could not have been better; I spent the majority of my time out on deck – literally learning the ropes. I became familiar with the ship and its day to day running, essential for someone who has never been on a ship before. The voyage took me to the South Pacific, some amazing places, and allowed me to meet new people and to experience completely different cultures.”
Catrina, 25, says that female mariners are becoming increasingly common and accepted by their male counterparts, adding: “I fit into the all-male environment relatively easily. I guess at first the guys were probably slightly surprised. A lot of crew find it strange and ask ‘Why are you doing this?’ but once you’ve told them they realise you’re no different to a male cadet.
“They also realised I was quite capable of manual work after they’d seen me shovelling cement out of the hold. I think having women at sea is still a strange concept for seamen, but it is changing – like anything it takes time.”
Colleague Sophie Fooks revealed what training had entailed for her so far: “I spent my first sea phase on a container ship going between Singapore, Malaysia and India. It was a great introduction to the job and I learnt a lot from mooring, anchoring and cargo work, to bridge watch keeping and gutting fish!
“On returning to college, I have completed my NVQ level 2 and have started working towards my HND, studying chart work, tides & sailings, maths, ship construction and rules of the road. The pace has definitely picked up but I continue to enjoy all the new challenges and am looking forward to joining my next vessel shortly.” BACK TO TOP
WELFARE
Abandon All Hope
Just to hammer the message, the Year of the Seafarer needs to be about action, and not fancy sentiments – Lloyd’s List carried a hugely compelling piece last month about a rusting Turkish chemical tanker, “Rhone”.
The vessel is alongside in the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta, with 10 stranded seafarers stuck onboard, all desperate to simply return home.
The crew have been abandoned by their employer, they remain unpaid and are without the necessary cash to get back to their families. Caught in what Lloyd’s List terms a, “penniless limbo”, the seafarers have been forced to survive for nearly five months on handouts from local charities and the Ceuta port authority.
According to officials in Ceuta the owners ditched the 35-year-old ship when it was detained after arriving in the port last September with a damaged hull.
Of course this latest band of abandoned brothers, are far from unique – they are among hundreds of mariners around the world who have been deserted by their employers. The International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) says that at least 370 seafarers have faced abandonment this year alone.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) database of abandoned ships contained details of eight reported cases of abandonment in 2008. While last year, the figure rose to 27, and as the economic woes tighten we can only expect even more in 2010…the so-called “Year of The Seafarer” remember!
While the IMO and ILO have drawn up plans to tackle the issue of abandonment, with guidelines for the provision of financial security for those abandoned. There is still much work to be done, and as recently as November a joint IMO/ILO working group urged both organisations to call on member governments to follow the guidelines ahead of a mandatory solution.
Let’s hope this is the year when something changes, as a prelude to a decade when the true value and worth of people is recognised and rewarded.
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SAFETY
Tiredness Can Kill
Another major bone of contention for seafarers has long been the issue of fatigue.
There have been so many attempts to appeal to commonsense on the issue of overwork, too few people and the tiredness which is such a curse and ruination of the modern seafarers existence…however, all attempts at progress and commonsense have usually come to nought.
It was with regret and a sigh then, that we noticed an announcement last month by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB). According to their investigation, a seafarer killed on board a Danish cargo ship off Fremantle could have been suffering from tiredness as a result of the ship's duty roster and movement in heavy seas.
In its report, the ATSB said the 37-year-old crew member died aboard the Thor Gitta while attempting to secure lashing bins in the cargo hold. The investigation found that the crew member was probably affected by fatigue as a result of the duty roster and the ship's movement in the heavy seas.
As a result of this accident, the ship's manager has implemented a range of measures on all its vessels including a different rostering system to better manage the fatigue of watchkeepers when the ship is at sea.
ATSB has issued one safety recommendation to the Danish Maritime Authority relating to the use of the six-hour-on/six-hour-off work routine and the effect that that work routine has on a crew member's level of fatigue.
Fatigue is a killer, fatigue eats away at safety, it makes investments worthless, it is destroying the very fabric of our industry…and something needs to be done about it. So once more we call for the Year of the Seafarer to see some positive action to fight this menace.
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SECURITY
Know Your Enemy
Too many ships today are still unprepared for transit through pirates waters, was the worrying verdict voiced at the IQPC Counter-Piracy and Ship Security conference held in Dubai last month.
Despite the internet containing vast amounts of maritime security information, many vessels trading within the ‘underbelly’ of the industry are simply not getting the information they need. All too often, important piracy guidance is not being promulgated effectively, leaving crews unprepared for the threat they face and of the means to mitigate the security risks in the area.
Maritime security author, Steven Jones, addressed the conference with a presentation entitled ‘Making Security Work’, highlighting the oft neglected and overlooked elements of security management at sea. Throughout the conference it became increasingly clear that information and security intelligence are key elements to enable vessels to react effectively to the piracy threats.
It is all too easy to forget that many working at sea neither have access to the internet nor to the best management practices it can provide. The reality check prompted direct action to help seafarers to understand how best to protect themselves and better manage security onboard. In collaboration with Shiptalk and Conference organiser IQPC, arrangements were made for a donation of 50 copies of a pocket guide “Surviving a Piracy Attack” to be delivered to the Reverend Stephen Millar of the Dubai Mission to Seafarers.
In the hope that receiving such information may have a positive effect, not only raising awareness but getting crews to think about the risks they face and how they can best deal with them.
“Surviving A Piracy Attack” by Steven Jones, ISBN: 978 0 9556513 9 7, is published by Shiptalk Publishing, and costs £12.99 for individual copies, with significant bulk order discounts available.
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Hacked Off
Piracy as ever is the hot topic in maritime security, however, it seems that a rather less violent, but nonetheless terrifying threat faces shipping…the hacker!
From Somalis downloading voyage plans and convoy data, to terrorists inducing collisions…is the threat real or imagined?
There have been rumours of groundings caused by hacker induced errors in the GPS, and I’m not just talking about the lamentable box office flop “Speed 2: Cruise Control” that saw Sandra Bullock trapped on the “Seabourn Legend”, an out-of-control luxury cruise liner whose navigation computers were reprogrammed by a computer hacker, setting the ship on a collision course with an oil tanker.
Also the hugely popular and influential GCaptain website suffered an attack from Russian hackers last month – which perhaps highlights that our industry truly is vulnerable to attack from those who may not carry AK47’s and RPG’s.
Lloyd’s Register group IT director Stephen Hand, revealed at a conference recently, that the classification society tackles a phenomenal 684,000 viruses a year worldwide. On the upside, according to Mr Hand, being at sea insulates shipboard systems from network attacks and he considers GPS to be highly secure.
Boffins at Cornell University and Virginia Tech issued a warning that hackers could bring down aircraft (and so presumably do all kinds to ships too) by spoofing the GPS signal, and even built a “spoofer” to highlight weaknesses in the system.
With a GPS receiver detecting signals from orbiting satellites, and using these to triangulate an exact time and place, a hacker simply has to create a false GPS signal to induce an incorrect time or location on the receiver. Spoofer devices could therefore be used to cause unholy chaos at the terrorist’s leisure.
As little as 10 microseconds error could cause power generators to explode, ships to crash into each other, financial transactions fail, criminals to avoid capture…and the collapse of the world as we know it! Thankfully such a spoofing device is not cheap to make. It requires about $1,000 worth of hardware – but that pales into insignificance with the $1 million research it cost to develop…mind you given the university education of many insurgents, perhaps we need to keep our guard up!
With the spectre of infiltration looming large, maybe it’s time to get the sextant out again?
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Permit To Entry
The United Nations Security Council last month adopted a vital resolution, extending for another twelve months the authorisation for States and regional organizations (ahem, cooperating with the Somali Transitional Federal Government) to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use all necessary means to fight piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast.
The resolution also invites special agreements with countries willing to take custody of and to prosecute suspected pirates.
This is good news, especially as the last month saw no let-up in the Somali piracy plague…with yet another VLCC taken, the 300,300-dwt “Maran Centaurus” (built 1995).
This was the culmination of a rash of attacks on large tankers – and perhaps hints at a growing sophistication amongst the pirates – as they target ever more attractive vessels, to heighten their payday…and perhaps the speed of negotiations.
It would be fair to say there has been a real surge in VLCC attacks. The 281,400-dwt, India-flagged “Smiti” was assaulted and damaged, while the 298,600-dwt, Hong Kong-flagged “BW Lion” was attacked by pirates using automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades over 1,000 miles east of Somalia.
The catalogue of large vessels being preyed on doesn’t stop there – the 264,800-dwt “A Elephant” was attacked earlier in the year, and in a bizarre twist the mothership used in the attack on the Liberia-flagged tanker was then itself hijacked. While the Iranian VLCC “Nesa” escaped from pirates after one of their boats sank.
Another VLCC, the “Sikinos”, was attacked off Oman, but the ship escaped after the crew used flares and water hoses to fend off the attackers. With yet another tanker, the 105,000-dwt “MV Album” attacked recently, about 800 nautical miles east of the northern coast of Somalia, maybe this seemingly new compulsion of pirates to take tankers could finally be their undoing?
While seafarers and old ships with coal, etc are not hugely newsworthy…oil is very politically sensitive, and could pose an environmental disaster, so this could begin to finally prompt the action needed to quash piracy once and for all. Fingers crossed…
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Foreign Policies
St James Park being overrun with robbing pirates looking to make a quick buck didn’t really sound like news to us…given that Mike Ashley has owned Newcastle United since 2007.
However it was a 1993-built, 13,924 dwt vessel of the same name, that was hijacked late last month that grabbed the headlines. The Zodiac vessel was reported to have passed through the Suez Canal just before Christmas and was in the International Recognised Transit Corridor in the Gulf of Aden when it was captured.
Such occurrences show that we are clearly still losing the war with pirates, and so it is still the matter of ransoms which is the elephant in the room when it comes to the issue of stopping piracy or of getting seafarers freed when they have been taken.
Last month the general secretary of Nautilus, Mark Dickinson, sent a suitably blunt letter to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, challenging his stance on the payment of ransoms.
The union opposes Mr Miliband's view that ransoms should not be paid, a view which surfaced when the VLCC “Sirius Star” was hijacked.
On the matter of ransoms and the governments views, Mr Dickinson wrote: “We can see no other option but to pay to secure the release of seafarers who have been taken hostage and until we hear of a viable alternative that would ensure the safety of our members in such circumstances.”
A Nautilus spokesman said the union had become very frustrated that the Foreign Office continued to repeat the “no payment of ransoms” formula but refused to spell out an alternative way of securing the safe release of kidnapped seafarers or of preventing hijackings taking place.
Let’s face it, we all know paying bad people money is flawed…but ever since the school days of paying the bully your dinner money to ensure you didn’t get beaten to a pulp, it has always worked. Cash is king, and until governments can come up with some proper ideas on protecting seafarers then they should refrain from dissing the only effective strategy of freeing those captured.
We don’t want to have to pay – but seeing as there is seemingly no tangible answer from those we look to protect us by other means, then it seems churlish to rail against the only “protection” we have…”protection money”.
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GENERAL
Disney Makes Sense
Safety management systems can contain all manner of weird and wonderful instructions, some of them can quite literally be a bit Mickey Mouse. However, one of the more bizarre safety protocols to reach us here at Shiptalk, which may or may not be true, requires the donning of a rather interesting piece of life saving apparatus... forget life jackets and fire man's helmets, don't get in the lifeboat without big black ears and a yellow beak although you can leave your trousers behind!!
It seems, according to Theme Park staff, that if ever a Disney cruise ship has to be evacuated at sea there are some pretty strange rules regarding the abandonment. Rumour has it, that the protocol requires the people who get the first lifeboat (even before the women and children) must include two Disney employees.
These two employees are required to take two costumes with them into the boat - one Mickey Mouse and one Donald Duck, so that when/if the children arrive to safety they can be greeted by Mickey and Donald. To ensure they don't get upset thinking their cartoon heroes have gone down with the ship.
Not sure what kids that like Pluto and Minnie will think, but it just seems crazy enough to be true.
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Virgin Territory
When we read of Virgin’s plans to “go down”…we were rather intrigued to say the least. After nightclubs, record labels, gadgets, mobile phone carriers, credit cards, cola, airlines and space ships, Sir Richard Branson is now reportedly getting into submarines.
Heading from his paradise Caribbean base on Necker Island, rich tourists will be able to make the dive of a lifetime into the Puerto Rican Trench, which is the deepest spot in the Atlantic.
The Virgin Oceanic project, is reportedly building the “Virgin Aquatic”, a sub capable of diving down to 35,000 feet. Richard Branson, said “The oceans need exploring – we know nothing about what’s going on below 25,000 feet. I have an island called Necker Island and 15 miles from there is the deepest place in the whole of the Atlantic, the Puerto Rican Trench. It’s quite likely that we’ll set up a scientific and exploration centre…to send out expeditions to explore that trench.”
He added, “The technical challenge is finding materials that can withstand the pressure at 35,000 feet. It’s almost easier to build a spaceship to go into space than to build a vessel that can withstand the pressures at 35,000 feet. But we think we can do it.”
Sorry Richard, what was that? You “Think”…you only THINK you can do it? If we were going down, down, deeper and down, we would perhaps be looking for a little more reassurance and confidence than that!
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Ship Of Fools
The world is full of idiots. Thankfully while most are on terra firma we have a chance of containing the chaos. However, when they break through waterline and take to the seas, the daft that walk amongst us can really cause some major headaches.
Last month a couple in their 60’s had to be rescued when their 30ft motor cruiser broke down at the mouth of the River Humber. The local Coastguard coordinated the rescue and the couple, were taken to hospital, where they were treated for hypothermia and sea-sickness.
The couple had reportedly just bought the vessel, “Lady 3”, and were trying to sail back to the London area, but they suffered engine failure and the vessel had no means of fixing the position, the compass wasn't working and the vessel had no heating.
The Coastguard said the wind was "near gale force", with a heavy sea and swell, accompanied by snow showers. The vessel was not carrying flares, didn’t have a working VHF and had only a stern and starboard side light.
The only means of communications was a mobile phone…though the calls to the couple from the coastguard were going direct to voice mail. Which isn’t exactly ideal. Please record your mayday message after the tone…
The local RNLI lifeboat had to be launched, and was able to tow the vessel to safety. A Coastguard spokesperson said: "We find it very hard to believe anyone would put to sea in a small motor cruiser, so poorly prepared, with little sea going knowledge, in the dead of night in such conditions and with the weather forecast to get worse. At one stage, it seemed so unbelievable I thought we were dealing with a hoax.”
Yes some people can be so dumb it almost seems like a joke…we know, we’ve sailed with some of them!
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Turbulent Times
A UK aquarium was forced to take action last month to prevent flatulence from a Brussels sprout-eating turtle triggering overflow alarms.
The Great Yarmouth Sea Life Centre had to lower the water level in George the green turtle's tank, after Staff at the centre gave George a seasonal treat of Christmas Brussels sprouts.
But turtles, like the humans who sat around your table on Christmas day, are prone to heavy bouts of flatulence after eating the vegetables.
Last year, a turtle triggered overflow alarms in the middle of the night after the splashes from gassy bubbles hit overflow sensors. So thousands of litres of water had to be drained from the 12ft deep tank to reduce the water level to keep it clear of the sensitive alarms.
A spokesperson said: "Last time an aquarist had to dash to the centre in the middle of the night, so we're not going to take any chances.
Apparently Sprouts are really healthy for green turtles, as the high levels of calcium are great for their shells, the fibre is good for their digestion and they also contain lots of beneficial Vitamin C, sulphur and potassium. Which is great apart from the side-effects.
So next time you visit an aquarium and wonder why they’re keeping the fish in jacuzzi…they’re not!
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