The Seafarer COVID-19 Welfare Survey announced recently by The Bahamas Maritime Authority (BMA) has already garnered very high levels of support from maritime organisations and seafarers themselves. But the initial responses received from seafarers are demonstrating that the vast majority, 87%, are still to receive a first vaccine.

Of the respondents to date, 86% would be willing to have the vaccine if offered and 65% would feel safer if they had been vaccinated.  Initial results also show that more than half of those who have been at sea during the pandemic have been impacted in terms of shore leave and ability to get on or off the vessel.  These are very much based on first responses and researchers are receiving many more on a daily basis.

The BMA and researchers at the University of Washington School of Public Health have thankeded the organisations which have shared this initiative with their members to allow the survey to reach as many seafarers as possible. Among the first organisations to support the initiative are international shipping organisations from government bodies, institutes, owners and operators, charitable bodies to other ship registries and a number of major maritime companies.  However, The BMA is receiving more support on a daily basis.

The aim of the survey is to accurately collect information from front-line seafarers (who will remain anonymous throughout), specifically focusing on their mental health needs before and during the pandemic. The data collected will be analysed and used to understand the challenges our seafarers experienced in order to develop effective solutions that raise awareness and guide international efforts to improve the livelihoods of those who choose to serve at sea.

The electronic survey itself is simple to complete and takes about 10 minutes. All results will be kept confidential at the University of Washington and respondents can choose not to answer any question with which they are uncomfortable. To maximise uptake, The BMA has approached a number of key industry bodies to support and raise awareness of the initiative, giving as many seafarers as possible the opportunity to participate and contribute towards this endeavour.

Tom Jenkins, Deputy Director and Head of The BMA’s Investigations Department, was responsible for implementing the survey. “I would like to thank every single person who has helped to share our Seafarer COVID-19 Welfare Survey. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone, and we would like to ensure that every seafarer has the opportunity to express their thoughts about how they have been affected. The results of the survey will help the industry to formulate the support identified as necessary by seafarers themselves.”

As part of a major initiative to accelerate digitalisation in the shipping industry, BIMCO has teamed up with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and other key stakeholders to help identify and overcome obstacles preventing a more widescale adoption of electronic bills of lading.

Some companies – such as MSC have already begun issuing electronic bills of lading.

“Establishing a globally accepted standard for electronic bills of lading is a critically important step for the successful digital transformation of our industry,” said Grant Hunter, Head of Contracts and Clauses at BIMCO, who is leading the project for the organisation.

BIMCO is to play a key role in this process by developing a global electronic bill of lading (eBL) standard for the dry and liquid bulk sectors and encouraging its acceptance and adoption by regulators, banks, carriers and insurers.

“BIMCO is widely known to regulators, banks and insurers for its standardised paper bills of lading such as CONGENBILL and CONLINEBILL. We want to take that same harmonised approach to facilitating trade by developing an eBL standard,” he said.

“The ICC is looking forward to working with BIMCO on its ambitious goal of delivering an electronic bill of lading standard for dry and wet bulk shipping to the world,” said Oswald Kuyler, Managing Director of the Digital Trades Standards Initiative (DSI) at the ICC. “Being at the forefront of global developments in shipping BIMCO is perfectly placed to undertake this ambitious task. Global trade needs standards to digitise trade at scale and BIMCOs work will help unlock the digitisation of another critical instrument”.

BIMCO’s electronic bill of lading standard will be fully aligned with the UN/CEFACT MultiModal Reference Data Model to ensure seamless and transparent eBL transactions across international borders. The organisation plans to develop its eBL standard with the assistance of, among others, the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) who published their own standards for the liner industry in December 2020.

MarineStar E-Lite provides voice and data connectivity in a package optimised for smaller vessels. Voice services are delivered over Thuraya’s Marine Star terminal, while email provision comes via IEC Telecom’s OneMailLite application, powered by GTMaritime. This dedicated connectivity solution is equipped with a fleetwide shore-side dashboard, allowing full visibility over performance, threat management and enabling remote changes to system configurations and real-time management of consumption limits. In addition, all files being transferred are compressed up to 95%, saving on airtime costs.

“MarineStar E-Lite is the most affordable solution designed particularly for small vessels. There’s no more need for long-term commitments or heavy airtime plans and no hidden costs either. This package is geared to cover the basic communication requirements and it does it well,” said Nabil Ben Soussia, CEO Asia, Middle East & CIS at IEC Telecom Group.

By default, MarineStar offers two lines to separate corporate communication and crew welfare. By including an email app, this voice terminal can now serve as a comprehensive communication solution for small and mid-sized vessels as well as a resilient back-up solution for large VSAT-equipped vessels.

“Cargo vessels, tankers and bulk carriers are well prepared to support the rising demand for digital connectivity. With VSAT on board, crews have an almost GSM user experience. However, a lot of our customers, especially in Asia and MENA regions, own mid and small-sized vessels that have no room or budget for such a set up. During the pandemic the need for connectivity has become more apparent, particularly for the fishing industry and for offshore support vessels,” explained Ben Soussia. “The impact of travel restrictions, port closures and other Covid-19 operating requirements meant that the precise coordination of their work became more important than ever, particularly considering the need to decrease crew capacity to ensure social distancing. With reliable e-mail service on board, such precision became achievable”.

Vessel operators need reliability and OneMailLite ensures email is successfully delivered, even if the vessel passes through the area with no signal. The app continues to work offline and automatically resumes data transfer from point of interruption. With cyber security an essential consideration, particularly following the implementation of the IMO’s cyber guidelines. The OneMailLite application has been developed in accordance with latest data protection regulations and includes robust security features.

“Attention to cyber security is one of the core principles behind the GTMaritime technology. OneMailLite is end-to-end encrypted. The app is equipped with multiple virus scanners and spam filters to ensure the mail received is safe and relevant. This approach boosts cyber security and helps vessel owners to comply with latest data protection legislation,” outlined Kirstie Williams, Head of Sales from GTMaritime. “We’ve been working with the IEC Telecom team over the past few months to incorporate our software into their product portfolio to ensure that all vessels, no matter the size, can have a cyber secure and stable maritime optimized solution. We are confident that this partnership will meet the demanding requirements for all IEC customers.”

Safety solutions provider Survitec has launched a unique service for the marine industry that provides a streamlined supply chain process for critical firefighting and other lifesaving products.

Called Survitec Essentials, the new service addresses the need for marine operators to have predictable and convenient access to essential safety products at major maritime hubs around the world. Survitec Essentials ensures the availability of a consistent range of products critical to maritime safety at short lead-times with fixed prices at 12 ports worldwide. Ports include London, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Algeciras, Piraeus, Colon, Barcelona, Houston, Fujairah, Shanghai, Singapore, and Busan.

Finn Lende-Harung, Survitec Product Category Manager – Fire, said: “This is a completely new approach for the commercial maritime industry. Survitec Essentials offers a consistent range of quality safety products at a fixed price at key ports along the global trading routes. This makes it easier for ship managers to budget and plan ahead. For the crew, it simplifies the training, service, and spare parts regime. With Survitec Essentials, we have addressed the ship managers’ supply chain challenges and worked to simplify them. With a fixed price arrangement across 12 key ports, ship managers no longer need to worry about exchange rates, quotes on a case-by-case basis, or multi-currency transactions. If a vessel operated out of Greece needs equipment in, say, Singapore or Panama, the company simply contacts their local customer service in Piraeus. This provides the customer coordination from one point of contact in the same time zone, speaking their native language for all ports. Furthermore, the prices are fixed in the customers’ preferred currency, procured through one entity and handled through one bank account, further simplifying the procurement process.”

Addressing the procurement challenges ship operators and crews currently face, Survitec Technical Sales Manager Wim van Iperen elaborated, “You can go onboard a ship and find several brands providing different versions of the same piece of kit, different versions of the same spares and accessories and different manuals and instructions, possibly in several languages. Crews need to match all of these elements when they come to maintain, service or use the equipment. This not only increases stock inventories onboard, but can be confusing, time consuming and complicated for crews. Now, with the Survitec Essentials range of more than 70 essential safety products, including spares and accessories, operators can be assured of having the products they need, where they need them, to stay safe and compliant, whilst also removing unnecessary complexities surrounding the management of safety equipment onboard.”

“Take a CO2 fire-extinguisher,” Iperen added. “With Survitec Essentials, the extinguisher, parts and instructions/manuals will be exactly the same across all the ports in the programme. No one else is doing this, certainly not on such a global scale. The further benefits are huge”.

Norwegian software and data specialist Dualog says that with around 1,000 installations of its Dualog Drive, clients are reporting savings of just under 200 man-hours per month as the product simplifies distribution of documents, data, software updates, IoT data and large files across the entire fleet.

For the maritime sector in particular, the sharing of files and digital resources has historically been tricky, the mobility of vessels making it reliant on limited bandwidth and software constrained by the box installed. But recent trends amplified by the pandemic show a doubling or even trebling of data downloaded onto vessels compared to previous years, and this will not subside now that digitalisation has been embraced so widely within the industry – putting unprecedented levels of stress on communications links. Maintaining connectivity between shore and ship is now crucial with the increase in IoT onboard, monitoring of data, and the rising need to send large files between the two.

Dualog Drive ensures that any document created on shore is automatically received in the correct location on all vessels, or in specified segments of the fleet. The system is ideal for transferring large amounts of data between ship and shore, facilitating the use of IoT on ships, monitoring of data and sending large files. The data to be transferred can come from any source, system, or sensor/machinery onboard – all without any manual input.

A recent Dualog Webinar highlighted the benefits for companies such as MOL Chemical Tankers, NYK Group and TB Marine who are using Dualog Drive. They found that generic cloud-based systems such as DropBox and OneDrive simply do not offer the specialised solution needed for maritime where bandwidth, airtime and latency are all challenging. The move to Drive for them has reaped rewards in terms of financial and time savings, in the case of MOL Chemical Tankers 186 man-hours per month, not to mention facilitating the digitalisation of systems on board.

The use cases are growing daily and really the possibilities are unlimited.  Dualog is finding that initially discussions are with IT departments but, as other departments see the potential of the system, they also open a dialogue with the company. It currently observes the solution used for disparate tasks like synchronising document libraries, sending operational data from ships to ship managers onshore, distributing software updates and patches, or even transferring CCTV images from ship to shore.

Silje Moan, Dualog’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “When developing Drive, our aim was to take away the pain of moving data between ship and shore with a product that functions independently of systems already in use.  Dualog Drive can be installed and ready to use within hours, and in fact, clients can set up a trial simply by opening an account and clicking on the link on our website.”

Diminishing attractiveness of a career at sea, coupled with rising man-berth ratios and continued fleet growth will lead to the highest shortfall of officers to crew the world’s merchant fleet in over a decade by 2026, with important implications for both hiring and future manning cost inflation, according to the latest Manning Annual Review and Forecast report published by global shipping consultancy Drewry.

The current officer supply shortfall is estimated to equate to around 3% of the global pool, which is broadly manageable and is not noticeably impacting hiring but is to some extent masked by the temporary idling of vessels in certain sectors such as cruise, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Ratings supply is much more elastic due to lower entry requirements and short training periods.

However, looking ahead to 2026 the supply/demand gap is expected to widen to a deficit equating to over 5% of the global officer pool and the highest level since 2013. The principal reason for this is the slowdown in officer supply as the attractiveness of a career at sea is diminishing. In the five years to 2016 the supply of seafarers available to crew the global merchant fleet was growing at an average annual rate of 2.7%, according to Drewry estimates. However, over the last five years this growth rate has shrunk to just 0.5% annually.

“With the ongoing negative effects of life at sea brought about by the Covide-19 pandemic, some seafarers may bring retirement plans forward, while others may look for work ashore,” said Drewry’s head of manning research Rhett Harris. “It has been the case for a number of years that quality officers have been difficult to recruit and retain. This situation is expected to get worse as the growth in supply fails to keep pace with an expanding world fleet.”