[BITList] Ship Operations - Aronnax: Intelligent ships need intelligent seafarers — 850,000 of them - Lloyd's List

[Michael Feltham]

http://www.lloydslist.com/ll/sector/ship-operations/article450358.ece

Aronnax: Intelligent ships need intelligent seafarers — 850,000 of them

Tuesday 14 October 2014, 16:14
by Craig Eason

Ship Operations
Unmanned ships will be a long time coming, so for the medium to short term we need to create more officers and more crew.
If projections for growth in global trade up to 2030 are accurate, the global fleet may need to swell by 70%

CAPTAIN Nemo had a crew of dedicated seafarers to run the Nautilus. He repaid that loyalty well. As the demand for complex shipping solutions grows, there is a risk that fiction will remain fiction.

Global trade is set to grow; most economists have a similar projection of an expanding global consumer class. Thus the demand for shipping will grow, and with that the demand for crews will increase.

This means, according to figures given by the International Maritime Organization last week, that on an annual basis 40,000 more apprentices will need to become junior officers than at present.

IMO secretary-general Koji Sekimizu explained that if projections that growth in global trade between today and 2030 prove accurate, then the global fleet may need to increase by 70%.

That means there needs to be 600,000 additional officers trained annually in addition to the current 500,000 working today, to bring the supply up to the 850,000 needed. That’s given that half the current number of officers in service will be retired by 2030.

The result is the 40,000 new junior staff that the IMO said industry needs annually for the next 16 years.

Even if the data is a little off, and global trade does not increase as much as suggested, which given current trends is possible, the demands are still going to increase.

There is a lot of talk, and there is also proven technology, to show that crew augmentation and ship automation can one day be a reality.

This, however, is unlikely to be in any of our working careers. Unmanned ships will be a long time coming, so for the medium to short term we need to create more officers and more crew. So while we slowly reduce crew numbers on ships, we still need young people to see some appeal in a seagoing career and have the means to train them properly.

Competency is a key condition written into almost any job description, not least officers who are responsible for steering global trade around the oceans.

Yet this competency is often treated with relative disdain given that shipowners often see crew costs as the second most costly operating expense after fuel bills.

The next crewing nation will be that which provides the cheapest crews.

One cannot say cheap crews are, or are not, the most competent ones, that is just not politically correct, but the mess rooms of ships are also not the most politically correct places to sit in.

We are gaining ever more demand for smart shipping, safe shipping, more industrial shipping, yet industry-wise it almost looks like we have taken a dumbing down approach to the manpower demands.

High salaries need not be the answer; responsible ones are, and a true opportunity for young officers to feel the value of a career and where it might lead could be one solution.


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