The key safety and green challenges for shipping, emissions reduction measures as we are heading towards 2030 and ways to enhance the safety of seafarers and navigation were discussed during the last SAFETY4SEA London Forum, where Mr. Apostolos Belokas, Managing Editor, SAFETY4SEA, asked industry experts to think of what needs to change to improve current landscape in the maritime industry. Namely, all speakers at the event answered the following question:
If you could change one thing with a profound or an immediate impact to move the industry forward, what would it be and why?
Martin Crawford-Brunt, Chief Executive Officer, Rightship
Transparency to assist in setting us all up for a new business reality.
Philip Diacon, Owner/ Director, Dryad Global
Information flow. That goes down to the heart of how the industry communicates; it starts with the e-mail. The way industry uses e-mail is of the 90s. Just moving from that to technology-enabled communication vessels become more connected. That will also allow communication to evolve with it. It will have a big impact, because it is not just words or documentation, but it is also that the speed of that information flow and linked to the wider data as example of collecting data.
Dustin Eno, COO, Navigate Response
Celebrating our successes publicly. We have a huge amount to celebrate and we are not doing it. To overuse the analogy to comparisons with aviation. We have to do that in a unified voice; to talk about publicly about what we are doing, in order to continue to do it.
Ricky Nilsson, Regional Sales Manager EMEA, MarineTraffic
Share information between different operators. Your information is my information and together, the value of that information increases. You can get more value by combining different data together. That is the biggest thing we can do, as it will open up transparency, increase revenue, decrease pollution and increase sustainability, as well.
Natalie Shaw, Director Employment Affairs, ICS:
The culture of the industry and I mean the perception of what the culture is outside for non-seafarers. If we want to attract the best in the future, we are going to need our culture first.
John Dolan, Deputy Director of Loss Prevention, The Standard P&I Club
The restoration of trust; trust is the foundation of trade. Shippers should not try to be clever, to save the grant, for example, by misdeclaring a cargo, and do the right thing. Fundamentally, international trade is based upon people complying with the rules. If somebody deliberately sets out to ignore the rules, then it is very difficult to deal with that. And what it does do, it translates into danger for mariners in the process and this is simply not acceptable; it must stop.
Capt. Mark Bull, Principal, Trafalgar Navigation Limited
One thing I could change is let’s stop “beating” the captain and the ship’s crews on the head and blaming them for everything that goes wrong. Let’s stop focusing on the very beginning which are the rules and regulations.
John Radcliffe, Forensic Engineer / Marine Surveyor, Taylor Marine
If I keep it in the context of casualty incidents, I think the ports of refuge. If you were able to guarantee ports of refuge around the globe, often give you supervisions that would go a long way to prevent any delays.
Gavin Allwright, Secretary, IWSA
Ring-fence tax being brought back into the industry, so ring-fence levy your tax on carbon. This could be done in a regulation or could be done in a collective action and setting the benchmark today. For example, MRV and DCS, we have the information now and we can actually set the benchmark from this year and incentivize. The first move is getting value from the decision maker.
Ian Adams, Executive Director, Clean Shipping Alliance
I would just make sure that decisions are made on facts, not on emotions and politics.
Thanos Koliopulos, Global Special Projects Manager, Marine & Offshore, London, Lloyd’s Register
Providing actual incentives to operators in order to make them want to move their fleet towards such kind of incentives.
Dimitrios I. Mountzouris, Managing Director, Hellespont Steamship Corporation
The incentives to be able to produce, to develop the technology; to make it more mature and affordable, so that we are able to use it. This is the only way to move forward. And also, the regulations have to be done only for new ships and tonnage, in order not to be a trouble to implement them.
Above views were presented during a panel discussion at the 2020 SAFETY4SEA London Forum on 12th of February 2020 at the Hellenic Centre, London UK.
