The focus of this week’s column was going to be on seafarer welfare, which was the subject of a conference I attended last week. It still will be, but it is not possible to talk about it without mentioning the latest attack on a ship in the Red Sea.

News that the Belize-flagged geared bulk carrier Rubymar was badly damaged broke just as I was writing this. Reports state that the crew abandoned ship and is safe. However, if attacks keep happening, the luck of seafarers will run out at some point.

Coincidentally, I also just received a statement issued by 29 shipping industry groups reminding the world that an entire ship’s crew was snatched from its vessel three months ago. “Today – Monday, Feb 19, 2024 – marks the three-month anniversary since the Houthis seized the Galaxy Leader and its 25 seafarers in the Red Sea. The vessel, a roll-on/roll-off vehicle carrier, was seized on Nov 19. The (global) maritime industry has joined together... to express (its) concern for the seafarers who have been held hostage, and call on the Houthis to release the crew of the Galaxy Leader.”

The statement repeated calls for all efforts to be made by international organisations and states to secure the release of the seafarers.

The plight of the Galaxy Leader’s crew was discussed at length at last week’s conference titled “Sustainability at Sea: Why Seafarers’ Health Matters”. About 80 delegates – mainly representatives of organisations supporting seafarers in one way or another – attended the event held at Trinity House, the headquarters of the United Kingdom’s lighthouse authority.

It was organised by the UK-based Seafarers Hospital Society (SHC), which used the occasion to launch its maritime key performance indicator toolkit. The conference covered changing regulations; training and upskilling; recruitment and retention; diversity, equity and inclusion; environmental, social and corporate governance; and the health and welfare of maritime workers.

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That was a lot to get through in seven hours, but I left thinking it was one of the more productive conferences I had attended.

SHC chief executive officer Sandra Welch set the scene by saying: “The maritime industry is increasingly turning to benchmarking and data-led solutions to demonstrate value and progress to a wide variety of stakeholders – and crew capacity and resilience underpin these endeavours and our wider global supply chains. Benchmarking the health and welfare of maritime workers will ensure that our industry is tracking its successes, proving value and identifying gaps so that these can be addressed...

“In addition to benefiting organisations and their workers, collecting this data will increase transparency, clearer communication and greater collaboration between stakeholders,” she added.

Now, SHC is dedicated to meeting the health, welfare and advice needs of seafarers of any nationality based in the UK. However, the issues raised are also relevant to the entire global shipping industry – and that was demonstrated by the list of speakers that included representatives from the International Maritime Organization, the International Chamber of Shipping, the UK Chamber of Shipping, Nautilus International, HFW, Inmarsat, Ocean Technologies Group and the Nautical Institute.

Captain Kuba Szymanski delivered the keynote speech, which was on improving and protecting the health of the industry’s most important asset – its people. Besides being the SHC chair, he is the secretary-general of InterManager, the global body for third-party shipmanagers.

Third-party shipmanagers are, in some ways, in an unenviable position. They employ seafarers to crew vessels owned by shipowners. They compete for business and depend on being able to provide a service for which their customers are prepared to pay. This means they can find themselves criticised for not providing enough support to seafarers – but this is something shipowners are sometimes unwilling to pay for.

That did not stop Szymanski from speaking out on the need for big improvements in the way the industry looks after its seafarers.

In particular, he singled out the matter of mental health, and asked the attendees what percentage of seafarers they thought were repatriated because of mental health issues. The responses ranged from 10 to 20 per cent, but he informed us only about 1 per cent are repatriated for this reason. Given that many in the room were involved in supporting seafarers’ mental health, this came as a shock.

He also slammed the performance of flag states in investigating and reporting accidents, stating that they were not interested in taking action that would drive owners away from their flags. That prompted a representative from the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to later repeat the union group’s longstanding demand for a genuine link between ship and flag state. Or, in other words, the ITF continues its campaign against what it calls “flags of convenience”.

Szymanski stressed that shipmanagers were taking the initiative to improve matters. InterManager has recently launched its General Principles of Conduct and Action, which focus on three key areas: care and respect for people; continuous development and optimisation; and effective safety culture.

It is easy to be sceptical about industry-led, non-mandatory codes, but Szymanski asserted this one would make a difference. InterManager’s member companies should complete initial self-assessments by April, with periodic and random independent and confidential audits to follow.

Perhaps having shipmanagers who are already at the top end of the business boosting their standards will make a difference. But there will always be shipowners and shipmanagers at the bottom end of the scale. That is where we need to look to port state control to work effectively. However, the various charities and groups which support seafarers’ health are unlikely to find themselves with nothing to do any time soon.