IMarEST Marine Professional June/July 2020

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How marine sectors are responding to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak Issue 3 2020 • www.imarest.org

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INSIDE: EUROPE’S GREEN DEAL / MARINE BIOTECH / BALLAST WATER MANAGEMENT CONVENTION

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5 Comment The IMarEST’s bid to become leaner, more agile and more resilient 6 COVID-19 Why the coronavirus pandemic presents opportunities, as well as challenges, for marine sectors

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IN DEPTH Beneath the surface of maritime industry trends

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9 The real deep web Protecting the subsea infrastructure that keeps the world connected 12 Vessel focus Launching the world’s most advanced scientific research vessel 14 Influencers Debate: incentives vs penalties to encourage ocean sustainability 16 Grey matter How COVID-19 is testing the delicate balance of shipping and logistics

LOOKING FOR TROUBLESPOT? You’ll find our popular Troublespot feature in our series of new weekly e-newsletters, launched in May. To ensure you receive yours, check your email preferences in your account at www.imarest.org/my-imarest FEATURES 18 Green marine Is the European Green Deal leading the way on ocean sustainability?

24 Plastics Biotechnology is being proposed to solve the ocean plastics crisis 30 Alternative fuels Delays should motivate stakeholders to innovate on zero-carbon fuels 36 Ballast water The experience-building phase of the BWMC is under-delivering on data 40 Propulsion Eco-friendly propulsion alternatives aiming to reduce underwater noise

44 History The high and lows of White Star Line’s journey from transatlantic liner supremacy to obscurity 48 Cargo capacity The devil is in the detail when calculating the banana-carrying capacity of today’s cargo ships 49 Protection and indemnity Why crew training materials intended for the classroom don’t always work on board 50 Women in engineering The importance of ensuring that both boys and girls are encouraged to build engineering careers 51 Energy Assessing the future growth of tidal schemes for renewable energy 66 The big questions Q&A with naval architect and consultant Dr Rachel Nicholls-Lee

INTERACTIONS The IMarEST’s shared knowledge hub 53 Marine noise Commercial shipping and rising concerns about anthropogenic sound 55 Branch spotlight How the UAE branch is driving the Middle East’s marine agenda 56 Fellow Q&A With Jim Wheedon FIMarEST 58 IUU fishing Tracking illegal fishing and misuse of Flags of Convenience 60 Training How a new apprenticeship is plugging the surveyor skills gap 63 Marine murmurs Readers’ views on penalisation 64 Your Institute The latest IMarEST TV content, plus a round-up of Institute news MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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EDITORIAL TEAM Editor Carly Fields Group Art Director Jes Stanfield Managing Editor Mike Hine Content Director Matthew Rock Account Director Anna Vassallo

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ADVERTISING SALES Michael Coulsey 020 3771 7232 michael.coulsey@thinkpublishing.co.uk Albert Hunt 020 3771 7199 albert.hunt@thinkpublishing.co.uk Scandinavian representative Örn Marketing +46 411 18400 roland@orn.se

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CONTACT Marine Professional Think Publishing, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH marineprofessional@thinkpublishing.co.uk 020 3771 7200 FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

@themarinepro facebook.com/themarineprofessional youtube.com/imarest All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Copyright © 2020 IMarEST, The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. Information published in Marine Professional does not necessarily represent the views of the publisher or the Institute. While effort is made to ensure that the information is accurate, the publisher makes no representation or warrant, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness or correctness of such information.

It accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any loss, damage or other liability arising from any use of this publication or the information which it contains.

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MARINE PROFESSIONAL What a difference a quarter has made. Since the previous Marine Professional hit your doorstep, the world has changed radically.

Whether we will return to the ‘norms’ we knew before is a subject of fierce debate. Faced with severe postage delays and an uncertain publishing climate, we too have had to reassess our processes. As a first step, we recently undertook a reader survey and listened to the opinions and suggestions given. Thank you to those who took part, and congratulations to Michael Lynch, winner of an Amazon Echo. You will find some of the suggested topics covered in these pages, and more will feature in the next issue, which will be the last of 2020. To overcome the printing and postage problems that publishing businesses now face, we have fast-tracked the planned roll-out of a unique e-news programme to ensure that the professional marine news you need reaches you in a timely manner. By the time you read this, the first of the series should have already reached your inbox. We hope you enjoy it and, as ever, we welcome comments and suggestions.

Carly Fields, Editor

THIS ISSUE’S CONTRIBUTORS Michael Grey MBE An honorary IMarEST Fellow and a former editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, Michael is a regular Marine Professional columnist and respected commentator in the marine industry.

Charlie Bartlett Charlie is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in a range of leading international titles.

He specialises in the technical and commercial aspects of shipping and offshore energy.

Keith Ray A Cambridge graduate with decades of experience in management consulting, Keith has a passion for the history of technology. He has written for Marine Professional since 2007.

Amy McLellan A freelance journalist, Amy has been reporting on the highs and lows of the upstream oil and gas and maritime industries for 20 years.

Felicity Landon Felicity is an award-winning freelance journalist specialising in the ports, shipping, transport and logistics sectors.

David Benyon David has served as a reporter and editor for several risk management and (re)insurance business magazines. His areas of focus include marine, defence, insurance and financial services subjects. He serves in the Royal Navy Reserve and is a keen recreational scuba diver and distance runner.

Plus industry comment from: Andrew Tierney, Pen Test Partners; Katie Mehnert, Pink Petro/Experience Energy; Stuart Edmonston, UK P&I Club; Martin Murphy, Marine Energy Wales

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COMMENT

Building a more resilient future WORDS / DAVID LOOSLEY

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he world is in the midst of an infectious-disease crisis that has claimed the lives of more than 325,000 to date. As I write this, countries are taking tentative steps to ease lockdown controls, but the chances of a quick return to the pre-COVID-19 normality appear slim.

The marine sector has been hit as hard as any other. As the virus spread outwards from China, countries reacted by closing their borders. Soon after, cruise ships became stranded.

Refused permission to dock by fearful port authorities, these floating cities became floating prisons for their passengers and crew alike.

Oil prices tumbled – briefly falling below zero for some grades. The outlook for the offshore industry remains bleak. Meanwhile, container lines like Maersk are reporting substantially lower volumes, as economies contract.

But by far the most troubling issue has been the plight of seafarers in the merchant fleet. They found themselves cast adrift as the usual routes for crew changeovers and repatriations were closed off.

By the end of April, some 150,000 seafarers were due to come ashore.

Tens of thousands were trapped at sea, forced to work beyond their contracts indefinitely, with little idea of when they might see their families again. Seafarers are known for their resilience, but even so, the situation has taken a severe toll on their physical and mental health.

The crisis has heightened appreciation of many frontline workers – nurses, doctors, supermarket staff, delivery drivers and utility workers – all of whom

continue to toil, knowing they face an elevated risk of infection.

Yet while we stand at our doors and clap in a gesture to celebrate their heroic efforts, few in the general public will stop to think of the world’s 1.2 million seafarers, who remain as invisible as ever.

Instead the industry had to issue a mayday call: at noon on 1 May ships

IMarEST ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2020 This year’s conference will be held as a flexible, two-week online event from 6–17 July, comprising webinars, panel discussions and interviews. Themes include decarbonisation, sustainability and autonomous systems.

O Find out more at bit.ly/2zPt3Sx

in port around the world sounded their horns to literally make their message heard. Since then, the International Chamber of Shipping, the International Transport Workers Federation, BIMCO and others have proposed a 12-step protocol to allow seafarers to join or leave ships at a series of ‘repatriation hubs’. We can but hope that governments and port States follow this guidance.

On a personal note, this will be my final leader for Marine Professional, as after eight years I’m stepping down from my role as IMarEST chief executive and taking up a new position as secretary general at BIMCO. During my tenure, the Institute has changed dramatically and for the better. We have turned around our finances and are in much a stronger position to weather storms, like the current pandemic.

We have ramped up our professional development activities, expanded our global profile and enjoy a more demographically diverse membership base. We are leveraging our non-governmental organisation status with greater effect at IMO and other global forums.

We also streamlined lots of backoffice functions and invested in our digital infrastructure to become a leaner, more agile and more resilient organisation. While coronavirus was unforeseen, this last change means the Institute can stay open for business.

Special Interest Group meetings are being held virtually. Professional review interviews too are happening over video link. Instead of holding branch meetings, our members are sharing their expertise through webinars. And you will have likely seen our revamped email newsletters arriving in your inboxes every Friday.

As these tools have proven themselves, so we have decided to hold the IMarEST Annual Conference 2020 in July as a completely virtual event. This will allow members who ordinarily would be unable to travel to London and attend in person to fully take part in proceedings and bring a global voice to the event.

Some of these new ways of working will remain even after the public-health threat recedes, as together with our increased resources, they enable us to function more effectively in pursuit of our charitable purposes and our vision of a world where marine resources are managed sustainably for the benefit of humanity. ■ David Loosley is chief executive of the IMarEST MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Times of great upheaval also tend to bring innovation, and for marine sectors, the coronavirus pandemic provides such an opportunity

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The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be the black swan to trump all others. In a matter of months, the world has been thrown head first into disarray with no clear sign of a return to pre-coronavirus ‘norms’ for some years, if indeed the world ever returns to that state.

Certainly, the economy will need serious nursing back to health. In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told the world to prepare for the “worst recession since the Great Depression”, a sobering assessment indeed. The magnitude and speed of collapse in industrial activity is, said IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath, “unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes”. There is, she warned, considerable uncertainty about what the economic landscape will look like when the world emerges from lockdown.

Finding silver linings for the marine engineering, science and technology sectors is no mean feat. IMarEST members have faced fundamental uncertainties both at work and at home, and many were thrown into a new remote-working world overnight.

Seafarers have had a particularly difficult time of it, with crew changes proving extremely difficult, permission for shore leave all but rebuked, and living conditions that promote feelings of isolation at the best of times, let alone when twometre social distancing is enforced.

Physical port State inspections have been curtailed, with the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) going so far as to suspend checks on ships for their compliance

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with IMO’s low-sulphur fuel regulations. The move was part of wider measures that cut back on inspections to reduce the impact of the pandemic on supply chains.

“In terms of enforcing IMO 2020 and ultimately MARPOL Annex VI requirements, as we have suspended port State control inspections, this also means that the checking of compliant fuel has been suspended,” the MCA said.

The agency also suspended ship survey and inspection activity, and relaxed rules such as extensions on ship certificates.

And then there is the oil and gas sector, which has been blighted by historically low prices and a surplus of supply as global demand waned with the world in lockdown.

Certainly, you do not need to look far for a story of doom and gloom.

But that is not the whole tale.

Upsides Dig deeper and there are reasons to be hopeful. For years, the marine industry has been berated for its laborious progress on making digital ‘work’. Successive conferences, seminars and boardroom meetings have talked up the benefits of digital, but translating the talk into action has moved at a snail’s pace.

An unexpected consequence of COVID-19 has been a wholesale shift to remote working as a basic digital progression for marine.

However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. E-document providers are reporting an upsurge in the use of e-bills and other important shipping documents, and while not strictly a response to COVID-19, remote surveying has now come into its own.

Stuart Nicholls, chief executive and founder of maritime data

INDUSTRY REACTION Morten Hagland Hansen, vice president, commercial, maritime and energy, at SES Networks: “As we’ve migrated to the ‘home office’, we have adopted new ways of working and interacting. Connectivity has been vital for this change.

This is also true at sea. From wellness to remote inspections, connectivity has allowed innovative solutions to keep shipping open for business.”

Marc Sima, co-founder and chief executive, Fuelsave: “Oil prices have hit historic lows during the COVID-19 pandemic. This means the energy transition has become more expensive, relative to fossil fuel costs. As a result, we believe it is now more important than ever to help clean, renewable and alternative fuels such as biodiesel, biomethane, and synthetic natural gas to stay as competitive as possible.”

Joe Riva, vice president and chief surveyor, ABS: “The industry is telling us they want our services delivered remotely, particularly in the current challenging environment. So I am proud that we are providing the most comprehensive remote services portfolio in the industry. It is an offer uniquely geared to help meet the needs of vessel and offshore asset operators.

As feedback makes clear, remote surveying is now business as usual for our clients and we continue to deliver these services all over the world, increasing operational flexibility and efficiency, as well as safety performance.”

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COVID-19

GUILD OF BENEVOLENCE The IMarEST’s Guild of Benevolence is available for members, past and present, the wider global community of Certificated Marine Engineers and their dependants who find themselves in a vulnerable position as a result of COVID-19. For more information, email the Guild Administrator, Karen Lendor, at karen.lendor@imarest.org

“In these challenging times we’ve shown, and reminded ourselves, that we’re a resourceful and adaptable industry and we can innovate when we need to. Let’s remember this”

specialist StratumFive, explains that the pandemic has forced shipping companies into an environment where remote operation is now the new normal: “Advanced digital systems are coming into their own and connecting the industry in new and positive ways. In these challenging times we’ve shown, and reminded ourselves, that we’re actually a resourceful and adaptable industry and we can innovate when we need to. Let’s remember this.”

In the classification field, ABS confirmed to Marine Professional that it has expanded its remote survey and audit options to 28 – the most comprehensive set in the industry – while Bureau Veritas (BV) explains that COVID-19 has “accelerated the digitalisation of classification”.

Matthieu de Tugny, executive vice president, marine and offshore, says that remote surveys have helped BV manage the challenges posed by the pandemic: “Although they can never completely replace the benefits of a surveyor on board ships, remote capabilities help support smarter surveying for safer shipping. This will pay dividends post-crisis. We will be more robust and agile, with proven solutions for the future.”

Online training There has been a keen renewed focus on training as well. The IMarEST offers a suite of online professional development courses and has increased its webinar offering to ensure members’ continual development. Take-up

of both has increased dramatically through the pandemic.

Deanna MacDonald, chief executive of Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration and co-founder of fuel traceability specialist BunkerTrace, says her company switched almost overnight from visiting bunkering ports to train surveyors and implementing its tool to developing training guides and testing its Bunker Delivery Note app remotely.

“We’ve also been engaging with the industry to accelerate our R&D and enhance our market approaches to help refine our processes with synthetic DNA and blockchain,” says MacDonald. “When possible, we’ll be ready to play our part in sustainably rebuilding our industry.”

Change has also been thrust on shipping’s regulator. Wholesale cancellations of key IMO meetings was the kneejerk response to lockdown, but since then IMO has tentatively dipped its toe into virtual meetings. Whether the body will consider moving to virtual platforms for its critical committee meetings even when lockdown is eased remains to be seen.

Tying all these positive pandemic outcomes together are digital moves.

Indeed, it could be said that shipping has made more moves towards digital in the past three months than it has over the past 10 years of digital ‘progression’. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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As the world surfs the web, few spare a keystroke for the submarine infrastructure that the internet is entirely dependent on WORDS / CHARLIE BARTLETT

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uch of the language of the tech industry – uploading, uptime, the cloud – is couched in the vernacular of looking upwards, betraying the somewhat embarrassing fact that, while many of us effectively live on the internet, not many of us

know that we need to look down, deep down, to understand how it works.

While SES, Amazon and SpaceX are all embarking on projects designed to launch thousands of small, cheap, low-orbit satellites to bring highspeed internet to some four billion humans without connections,

today’s bandwidth applications handled from up in the sky are almost entirely limited to planes and ships.

For the rest of us, packets of data move from one continent to another along unseen undersea cables, each around 3in in diameter and comprised largely of coiled strands

of steel armour, which shroud an insulated core of millimetre-thick fibreoptic wires – the only part of the cable that actually transmits any data.

Despite their diminutive size, these fibres handle 97% of transoceanic communications, and US$10 trillion – or half of the US’s annual GDP

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– in global financial transactions every day; they are more integral to the world economy than oil, and yet they are under threat.

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In July 2019, 14 Russian sailors, seven of whom were high-ranking captains, died on a Russian nuclear submarine, AS-31 Losharik, after a battery explosion. The seafarers sealed themselves inside the compartment to fight the fire, rather than evacuating, forfeiting their lives, saving their vessel and “prevent[ing] a planetary catastrophe” according to Naval Captain Sergei Pavlov, speaking at their funeral.

Losharik can dive to 6km, 15 times the depth of a Russian Typhoon-class sub. Launched in 2003, it is operated not in any official military capacity, but by the shadowy Directorate of Deep-sea Research, and features a hydraulic robot arm on its underbelly, as well as an arrangement of four skids. American intelligence services strongly suspect Losharik has been developed to give Russia the capability to sever undersea cables as a mechanism of unconventional warfare; settling on the seabed with its skids, it would reach down with its hydraulic arm, snip the

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cable and dash away at a depth leaving very little recourse to its enemies.

US Navy Rear Admiral Andrew Lennon, NATO submarine commander, told the Washington Post in 2017: “We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen. Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”

In a 2017 report by British MP (and current chancellor) Rishi Sunak entitled Undersea Cables: Indispensable, insecure, retired US Navy Admiral James Stavridis argues that cables are a particularly attractive target, as attacking them occupies a grey area between an act of war and a nuisance known as ‘hybrid warfare’.

“The fundamental idea of hybrid warfare,” Stavridis explains, “is hostile activity that stops short of full, overt, offensive action and is sufficiently ambiguous that it allows the aggressor plausible deniability and makes international response more difficult… we should prepare for increased maritime hybrid activity.

“Chinese activities in the South China Sea and Iranian actions in the Arabian Gulf already show characteristics of a hybrid approach, using civilian vessels rather than easily identifiable ‘grey hull’ naval platforms to obfuscate the involvement of state actors. Underwater cables are an obvious target for such hostile action: they are a vital

infrastructure asset with ambiguous protection in international law that can be damaged with relatively unsophisticated, nonmilitary hardware.”

Straightforward and catastrophic As Sunak’s report notes, even a physical intervention may not be necessary; a cyberattack against a landing station, where several cables connect at once for cost reduction’s sake, could

Shallow waters in the Red Sea make cable ruptures and snags relatively commonplace, and the region is plagued by data outages be straightforward and catastrophic. “[A] system user could, for example, delete ‘the blue wavelength on channel 32’ from a particular cable system. That wavelength might transmit all communications from Internet addresses belonging to a small country – like Yemen, Bahrain, or Estonia – to that landing site. [Equally] a user could remove all wavelengths on a particular cable, effectively shutting down large portions of data traffic for multiple states.”

But damaging these connections does not require a military genius; the same report goes on to show that the leading cause of damage to undersea cables is fishing vessels, making up some 44% of incidents; anchordragging, meanwhile, causes around 15%.

Falcon down At the beginning of 2020, the FLAG AlcatelLucent Optical Network (FALCON) cable, located off Yemen and managed

by Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), was cut. Severing some 2.56Tbps of transfer capacity in a single stroke, the incident caused 80% of bandwidth capacity in Yemen to shut off instantly.

Despite the ongoing conflict in Yemen that has raged since 2015, the widescale inconvenience caused by the incident, which affected Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan and Ethiopia, makes malicious intent unlikely. “Initial findings indicate that the probable cause was an anchor drag by a large merchant vessel in the immediate area,” said GCX in a statement in January.

Indeed, shallow waters in the Red Sea make cable ruptures and snags relatively commonplace, and the region is plagued by data outages as a result. Fortunately, the shallow water also makes repairing the cables easier, as they are easily retrieved from the seabed and repaired.

The most modern cables have state-of-theart materials in place to ensure ‘longitudinal watertightness’ – the extent to which a cable is protected from water ingress at its ends, for example in the case of accidental severance.

Sometimes, the cable’s core is packed with petroleum jelly, suspending the optical fibres and preventing water from running down

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Submarine cable map (17 March 2020)

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Source: TeleGeography, www.submarinecablemap.com

the length of the core – particularly important in the deeper ocean reaches, where pressure will force water into any cavity available. The most modern cables position their fibres inside a sheath made up of particles of glass or aramid yarn, which swell on contact with water and prevent further ingress.

When two ends of a cable are severed, the telecom operator sends signal pulses through them. These pulses emerge from each end and produce sonar pings, which allow engineers to pinpoint the location of the break. Once this is established, a repair ship is sent and uses a grapnel hook, accompanied by a winch, to retrieve each end of the cable to shipboard workshop, where the protective steel and PVC is spliced away.

The fibres are then wound together inside a robust, sealed metal joint, and can be repositioned on the seabed. Operating this way, the process can be completed in under 24 hours, given favourable weather conditions.

Two other cables connect along the Yemeni coast – Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE1) and SeaMeWe-5 – and the country was still able to maintain a limited capacity of 20%.

However, this extremely short supply was not able to sustain the pressure of all the connections, causing outages for every internet user.

US State Department documents released

by WikiLeaks indicate that several cable landing sites in the UK are ‘critical’ to US national security

Drowning the internet Not every country is as vulnerable as Yemen, where the sea is shallow and internet infrastructure is relatively weak; similarly, deliberate cutting, regardless of deniability, is likely to be viewed as an act of war. But ambient threats to undersea cables are many and varied as well. Sharks like to sharpen their teeth on them; deep-sea earthquakes and other seismic events are also a worry.

However, climate change poses a much wider-reaching threat to internet infrastructure in many countries. In around 15 years’ time, sea-level rise will fully submerge many of the complex cable landing stations the world relies upon today.

In the US, New York, Miami and Seattle – places where major cables

connect with the shore – will see around a foot of extra water, putting 20% of the US’s internet capacity in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, US State Department documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that several cable landing sites in the UK are ‘critical’ to US national security, despite being situated in remote coastal towns and relatively poorly guarded.

Much work will need to be done in the coming years, then, to pull stations on both sides of the Atlantic back from the shore. While the cables themselves are constantly upgraded – the average transmission rate has increased over the last five years from 9Tbps to 35Tbps – it has become necessary to pay more attention to futureproofing and maintaining their security on land. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Arise, Sir David When Cammell Laird agreed to build the world’s most advanced scientific research vessel, it faced a singular engineering challenge

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he most sophisticated research vessel in the world has now entered the final stages of its construction and testing at the Cammell Laird shipyard on the River Mersey, northwest England. Built at a cost of £200m by the UK government, RRS Sir David Attenborough represents the largest investment the country has made in polar science since the 1980s.

The 129m vessel, due to enter service in October, will be operated

by British Antarctic

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Survey, spending northern summers in the Arctic and austral summers in Antarctica.

With a crew of 30 and accommodation for up to 60 marine scientists, Sir David Attenborough will be able to deploy a range of remotely piloted scientific instruments, allowing research teams to gather detailed simultaneous measurements from the ocean, sea floor and atmosphere.

Data from the deep ocean will be captured using robotic and remotely operated devices, including the ship’s autonomous unmanned vehicle, Boaty McBoatface (memorably named as the result of an online poll), which will travel beneath sea ice carrying an array of instruments to make various scientific measurements, including the abundance and distribution of fish, and the thickness of ice fields.

Inhospitable seas When Cammell Laird agreed to build the ship, it knew it was taking on a tough brief. The vessel had to incorporate engines powerful enough to navigate across the most inhospitable seas on the planet and through thick polar ice, yet be able to comply with strict environmental regulations and operate extremely quietly, with ultra-low vibration, so as not to interfere with its own sensitive acoustic instruments while underway.

The shipyard decided to equip the vessel with a diesel-electric propulsion system powered by two six-cylinder and two nine-cylinder Rolls-

Royce Bergen engines.

The configuration of different engine sizes will allow the most efficient operation across the wide range of conditions Sir David Attenborough is likely to encounter. The engines are also designed to operate on ultra-low sulphur fuel, containing less than 0.10% sulphur, to meet the latest MARPOL requirements for operating in sulphur emission-controlled areas.

Combined with the ship’s specially shaped hull, the propulsion system will be able to propel the ship through ice 1m thick at 3kn. It has also been customised to run as silently as possible, with special attention given to

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avoiding any sweep-down of bubbles around the hull that could interfere with the scientists’ acoustic sensors.

To ensure minimal underwater radiated noise, the entire vessel has been designed to achieve a DNV-GL Silent (R) notation at speeds up to 11kn, and a DNVGL Silent (S) notation while towing seismic equipment at 6–8kn in calm seas.

“People are becoming more and more concerned about a climate catastrophe... If we pay attention to the scientific knowledge that this ship will gather, then we will stand a much better chance of finding a way to deal with what lies ahead”

Climate considerations Other innovative features aboard Sir David Attenborough include its 4m diameter moon pool – a vertical shaft running through the centre of the vessel, allowing underwater craft to be deployed and recovered at the most stable part of the ship, making it easier and safer than loading and unloading equipment over the side or stern, particularly in rough seas.

The hull, meanwhile, has been treated with a special non-toxic paint system that provides a hard, impermeable and impenetrable coating, which will offer longlasting protection below the waterline without any need to use chemicals.

“We all need this ship,” said Sir David Attenborough, the

veteran natural historian and broadcaster whom the ship is named after.

“Our world is changing and it’s clear that people around the world, especially the young, are becoming more and more concerned about a climate catastrophe.

However, human beings are resilient and skilful.

If we pay attention to the scientific knowledge that those who will sail in this ship will gather, then we will stand a much better chance of finding a way to deal with what lies ahead.”

According to Cammell Laird, construction is currently ahead of schedule, with the ship now operating under its own power and its lifeboats installed.

“This is a great moment in the final stages of the build,” says

VESSEL SPECIFICATION Length: 129m Beam: 24m Gross tonnage: 15,000 Endurance: 60 days Range: 19,000nm at 13kn cruising speed Ice-breaking capability: Up to 1m thick at 3kn Accommodation: 30 crew and 60 scientists Cost: £200m

John Drummond, project director at Cammell Laird. “Testing the ship’s power and installing its lifeboats are very visible signs of the huge amount of technical and engineering work that has been undertaken so far.

This is a truly unique and highly complex vessel – and we are proud to be getting it ready for sea.” ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Should ocean sustainability be encouraged by incentives or penalties?

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Paul Holthus

Claire Jolly

Oliver Steeds

Founding president and CEO, World Ocean Council

Head of Ocean Economy Group, OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Innovation

Chief executive, Nekton

Ocean sustainability should be encouraged primarily through incentives for leadership in developing and implementing best practices that go beyond minimum requirements.

Industry should work with government and other stakeholders to develop the regulations that establish the baseline requirements and level playing field.

The maritime community should work with government and key sectors, especially investment and insurance, to identify and develop the incentives that encourage and motivate companies to seek to perform above and beyond those minimal requirements. Because of the international, interconnected nature of many of the ocean and maritime sustainability issues, it can be valuable for companies to link with like-minded peers in forming pre-competitive leadership alliances to identify and develop the opportunities for addressing shared sustainability priorities.

Stick or carrot? Incentives and penalties are both needed to improve ocean sustainability.

Like in every sector of the economy, the behaviours of the different ocean communities can be charmed or coerced toward improved environmental sustainability. Policymakers have a range of tools, from economic instruments to regulations, leading to different types of incentives and penalties. Two examples follow.

One of the reasons why illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is still thriving today stems from the high profits the industrial fishing operators can make and the comparatively low financial risks they face. A possible deterrent to engaging in these illegal activities involves restricting or eliminating access to marine insurance for fishing vessels identified as being involved in IUU fishing. This involves a range of actors, including governments passing adequate national legislation IUU fishing is making it compulsory for thriving [due to] insurers to consult IUU fishing the high profits vessel lists published by the industrial regional fisheries management fishing operators organisations (RFMOs) can make and the containing vessels that have comparatively low been subject to an INTERPOL financial risks notice. As another illustration, a growing number of retailers see reputation (and in some cases higher profits) as an important motivation behind the transition to offering certified seafood products. The development of independent certification, encouraged and checked by public authorities to avoid scams, can provide enhanced credibility with consumers and improved sustainability.

This incentive has been shown to impact activities in the fishing value chain in the US in particular.

Many economic and regulatory tools already exist and could greatly improve ocean sustainability for the benefit of everyone. They need to be better known, used and actually enforced to make a real difference.

Ocean sustainability is not open for negotiation.

A healthy, productive and resilient ocean is required for a healthy, productive and resilient planet. Take one indicator – protected areas. The growing scientific consensus, endorsed by the UK government and a growing number of nations, is that we need at least 30% of the ocean protected by 2030 to support a healthy and productive planet.

Currently less than 2% is highly protected and 8% has some sort of designation.

Consider another indicator: according to the UN more than half of marine species may be on the brink of extinction by the end of this century.

Ocean changes affect the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. Carrot or stick? Both are needed and at a range of scales at different times for businesses, individuals and governments. Right now, we need very big sticks and very big carrots to urgently change the direction of travel.

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Influencers, 1

Mark Spalding President, Ocean Foundation Ocean sustainability should be encouraged by incentives and rules, with penalties for failing to follow the rules. I do not necessarily see a difference between incentives and penalties. Isn’t the potential of being penalised a form of incentive? Regardless, all are critical in managing the human relationship with the ocean.

They are tools to move human behaviour toward sustainable use of natural resources.

Do we want to create an incentive for companies and other actors to become paragons in their performance (and thus earn a reward)? To be of value, incentives must provide a measurable way to realise a greater societal return than the budgetary cost of the incentive itself. Or are we seeking the minimum acceptable level of performance required to meet sustainability objectives? Sadly, humans (and certainly some companies) are more driven to meet performance levels that are tied to avoiding penalties that cost more than the profits from breaking the rules.

Using incentives and penalties creates a shared-risk approach. In fact, incentives should be paired with penalties. Following the rules should be the expectation (baseline), and fulfilling enhanced sustainability goals should carry rewards (incentives); penalties NEXT ISSUE’S QUESTION

Is the industry doing enough to encourage a robust pipeline of marine talent?

If you would like to contribute, please email marineprofessional@ thinkpublishing.co.uk

should be there for both breaking baseline rules and falling way behind on sustainability objectives.

If ocean sustainability objectives are met or exceeded, society benefits, and the company, or other actor, benefits from the incentive as well as improved reputation and PR. But if performance is subpar, rules are broken and objectives missed, we ask via a penalty for the polluter to pay (for example). This is why

To be of value, incentives must provide a measurable way to realise a greater societal return than the cost of the incentive itself governments should use both; to keep the outcomes in a narrow range that can be managed, increase the incentives for pursuit of excellence and reduce the likelihood of harm to the ocean and society.

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Bitter pill to swallow

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With a vaccine many months off, COVID-19 is testing the delicate balance of shipping and logistics

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have an old photograph from my late uncle’s collection which shows the arrival at an Australian port in 1919 of a dazzlepainted liner packed with returning troops from the war in Europe. It is a scene of tremendous rejoicing which turned out to be short-lived, as accompanying these heroes aboard ship was the terrible influenza virus which, globally, was to kill many more than died in the war itself.

The prospect of a subsequent disease becoming a global pandemic, spreading like wildfire and becoming as virulent as that earlier contagion, has haunted medical authorities for a century, despite powerful and effective antibiotics.

The measures being put in place by quarantine authorities around the world for COVID-19 reflect these worries, even though the virus has not thus far demonstrated the fatal characteristics of earlier contagions. But the connectivity provided by fast modern transport is, when disease is considered, a serious disadvantage compared with an earlier, smaller-scale and far slower pace of life.

Port health and quarantine authorities

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have many weapons at their disposal, but the international mobility of people works very much in favour of rapid disease transmission.

And whatever procedural precautions might be devised, it is difficult to have in place any reasonable measures that can cope with the arrival in the roadstead of a cruise ship with nearly 4,000 people embarked and a novel contagion loose within its floating population. It is also worth pointing out that the Diamond Princess, which caused the Japanese authorities such trouble,

Professional seafarers are facing immediate and unpleasant consequences as authorities strengthen their defences against the virus has far from the largest capacity afloat today. And while critics have pointed to the cruise ship as a farfrom-ideal place to keep a contagion in check, it is difficult to imagine any worse scenario than was faced by the authorities in Yokohama, since replicated in other ports where cruise ships have docked.

There are clearly hard lessons being learned from the unexpected pandemic emerging from China. Not for the first time, those relying on ‘just-in-time’ logistics for their components have been reminded of this system’s vulnerabilities.

Knock-on impacts

The fallout from the sudden dip in cargoes has taken many by surprise and is the last thing that is needed in sectors operating with razorthin margins. Cancelled sailings, interruptions to contracts of affreightment and attempts to invoke force majeure clauses will guarantee some busy times for lawyers.

The knock-on effects of a slump in demand for raw materials and components will register as a serious disruptor to the finances of even those countries able to best isolate themselves from the health effects and that ultimate service the shipping industry.

As always, it is the professional seafarers, out of sight and out of mind, who are facing all sorts of immediate and unpleasant consequences as authorities strengthen their defences against the virus. It is the easiest thing in the world to deny them

shore leave, whether or not their ship has come from an infected part of the world. Within a few weeks of the emergency beginning, crewing agencies were advertising their ability to supply crews from those parts of the world, such as Eastern Europe, perceived as a ‘safer bet’ than those who might have connections with breakout countries.

Real problems are being faced by those whose contracts are ending and who are hoping for a relief at the next port, when the authorities make it clear that crew changes will not be permitted. Similarly, those hoping for a new contract but who live in a part of the world deemed a health risk will be experiencing hardship in finding work. In any sort of emergency you may depend on seafarers, for good or ill, being on the front line. ■

Michael Grey MBE is an honorary IMarEST Fellow and a former editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List

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The devil’s in the lack of detail When it comes to ocean sustainability, is the European Green Deal leading the way, lacking in substance or a bit of both?

WORDS / FELICITY LANDON

The European Commission first published its European Green Deal in December 2019. In January, MEPs backed the proposals but called for more ambitious and enforceable legal measures – e.g. a binding target to expand Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to at least 30% and infringement procedures against Member States failing to respect EU environmental laws.

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Describing the Green Deal as Europe’s new growth strategy, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said: “It will help us cut emissions while creating jobs.” But can the industry really have its cake and eat it? In terms of the oceans, is it possible to have thriving (and growing) marine industries and a thriving marine environment at the same time? Opinions are divided.

Dr Monika Verbeek, executive director of Seas at Risk, says that,

on first reading the Green Deal, the question that jumps out is: will it be enough or is it too little, too late? “The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report signalled that the ocean is getting warmer and more acidic, losing oxygen at a much faster pace than expected, and undergoing a massive loss of biodiversity. That is the context we have right now.

Really we are almost fighting a lost battle – but it is starting to sink in

Green marine, 1

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“They just say more or less that we will continue with the Common Fisheries Policy – while they have failed on the deadline for ending overfishing by 2020” with some policymakers that we are in crisis mode.”

She is worried that the document gives “so little attention” to the ocean: “When you talk about climate change, the ocean has a

very important role and that doesn’t seem to be recognised. Of course, we don’t know the detail yet. But while they talk about the need for transformative change, they also seem to continue with ‘business as usual’.”

Nice lines on a map Verbeek welcomes the fact that Europe is “trying to do something”, but says a lot still needs to be defined. “And it seems to be still

based on the growth idea. With fisheries, they just say more or less that we will continue with the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) – while they have failed on the deadline for ending overfishing by 2020 and I don’t know if there will be anything more to ensure the regulations are being implemented.”

Verbeek says there is very little on seafood in general in the Green Deal, other than saying it is a lowcarbon protein. “Simply promoting MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, presents the European Green Deal. Right: Christine Valentin, chief operating officer at the World Ocean Council (top); and Dr Monika Verbeek, executive director of Seas at Risk (bottom)

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it without looking at the impact of these industries seems stupid and can create a new problem for biodiversity.”

Equally, the Green Deal talks about the importance of designating more MPAs – that is great, she says, “but currently more than 10% of European sea is designated as MPAs and hardly any of them have any management plan or finance to be managed. Having nice lines on a map isn’t making any difference”.

Blue growth The Green Deal also hints at plans to boost aquaculture and offshore renewable energy, says Verbeek.

“Clearly we need renewable energy.

There is a question as to whether we really need aquaculture. But more and more industries are being pushed into the sea. They all say, yes, of course it must be done sustainably, but there is no regard, at least in this Green Deal, to the potential impact of large offshore wind farms and how we can make

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“They see the value of using state aid to ensure that vessels can be modernised, whereas from our perspective that is not the role of taxpayers’ money” sure it is being managed so it is not to the detriment of biodiversity.”

Samantha Burgess, senior advisor on marine matters at WWF, has similar concerns: “As a first impression, we were really disappointed about how little focus there was on the oceans within the Green Deal, and felt there wasn’t as much coherence as we would have liked.

“There was a nod to the importance of the blue economy and fisheries. And they talk about restoring the ocean through a biodiversity strategy. They also talk about maritime emissions no longer being exempted in the future – something we are very excited by.

We are also keen to make sure that the exemptions for fishing vessels do

not go forward. All industries need to do their part to reduce emissions, so we can achieve net zero.”

WWF was much happier with the European Parliament’s response to the Green Deal in January, adds Burgess.

“It had greater specificity. The parliamentary response added quite a few amendments and talked about the blue economy and the fisheries policy. It offered more tangible outcomes on how to achieve sustainable ocean management from the fisheries, climate and marine protection perspective.”

When she first arrived in Brussels for WWF in 2016, there was a very strong focus on the “blue growth” agenda, Burgess says.

“Now there is more about the blue economy and talking about how it needs to be sustainable and aligned with what the environment can tolerate, and the balance of socioeconomic factors with the environment.”

Green marine, 2

TIGHTER PLANNING, TIGHTER PROTECTION

Practical approach needed Where there was a frustrating lack of ‘how’ in the Commission’s document, this improved in the parliamentary version, Burgess says. Parliament also called on the Commission to go beyond its original commitments on biodiversity, deforestation, oceans and agriculture, among other issues.

The Green Deal document is now out for discussion by environmental ministers and representatives of the European Parliament and Commission; a final version is expected around September.

“I very much value this European way of coming to new legislative proposals,” says Burgess. “It is slow, but it makes things stronger and often more ambitious than what Member States can do on their own.”

There are some disconnects that she highlights. For example, MEPs in fishing areas feel the pressure from constituents: “They see the value of using state aid to ensure that vessels can be modernised, whereas from our perspective that

WWF’s Samantha Burgess says the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive will be a key driver for Europe’s sustainability plans when it comes into effect next year, focusing on sustainable management of marine activities and coherence between them.

“For example, for the EU to achieve its ambitions to be carbon neutral, it will need to invest a lot more in offshore renewable energy. That’s obviously good news for those in the industry, but it needs to be done in a sustainable way to ensure no conflict between wind farms and different marine users.”

The general public perception of the ocean is that it is “almost infinite and empty”, says Burgess. “But the sea is an extraordinarily busy place. It is incredibly surprising it has taken until now to really understand the importance of “We have already planning for that in the future.” devastated loads Christine Valentin at the World of land with our Ocean Council warns that if there is mining – why go no protection of the ocean, the blue into the deep sea?” economy will not be able to continue to grow. That may be obvious for fishing or aquaculture, but less so for the development of offshore renewables. “If you want to do deep-sea mining, you need to understand the impact,” Valentin says. “And if you want to develop shipping in areas that are particularly fragile, you need to be able to do that sustainably.”

An important yardstick is the pricing point: if deep-sea mining for minerals is cheaper than recycling those minerals required for new phones, there is something wrong with the pricing.

“We have already devastated loads of land with our mining – why go into the deep sea?” asks Dr Monika Verbeek of Seas at Risk. “We say no, the impacts will be vast and last centuries – if recovery is even possible at all, because life in the deep sea is slow-growing and very vulnerable.”

She is concerned that the Green Deal zeroes in on efficiency, technology and innovation, which she says is similar to the green growth narrative of the 1990s. “The suggestion is that you can reconcile green growth and environmental targets. That has certainly not proved to be the case.”

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is not the role of taxpayers’ money – it is to protect the environment and ensure safety at sea. Safety isn’t a more modern engine.”

There is already a lot of excellent EU ocean legislation in place, says Burgess. “Where it falls down is that the policy can be very good, but the implementation is not. We have seen this in the CFP. Member States have not been spending enough of their budget from the EU to support their fisheries’ transition to more sustainable methods.

“It is exactly the same in the marine environment. The EU announced very proudly that it has achieved 12–13% designated MPAs in EU waters – but scratch the surface and it is designated in name only. So it’s just a line on the map with no implementation plan, monitoring or evaluation, and no change in what activities can go on in that area to protect biodiversity.”

She claims that only 2% are actually delivering marine protection.

Taking the lead

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But the will is there to make improvements. The EU is trying to be one of the leaders in the transition to climate neutrality, and also on ocean and biodiversity protection, says Christine Valentin, chief operating officer at the World Ocean Council (WOC).

“When you look at what the EU has been doing in terms of the ocean, it is pretty busy. The question is whether it is sufficient or not, especially in the way it engages the private sector and business community. Is it something that is going to really enable change in the way it needs to happen – which is globally?”

Valentin says it is very positive that Europe is focusing on blue growth that is sustainable, on general ocean literacy and knowledge around marine matters, and on marine spatial planning. The WOC has been working with the EU on a number of initiatives and

CLIENT

EMISSIONS TRADING OVERLAPS The German Shipowners’ Association (VDR) has raised concerns about plans to extend the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) to the maritime sector, and how fair that will be.

“We welcome the Green Deal in general, as every industry must contribute to climate change

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mitigation. With it, Europe has decided to lead the way to carbon neutrality. This is an ambitious goal that we fully support,” says VDR spokesman Christian Denso.

But one of the main sticking points for VDR is the ETS, which is short on detail of how it will be applied. For example, will it apply only to EU companies or will it also apply to anyone bringing ships into a port in Europe?

VDR does not doubt the Commission’s good intentions, “but we always have to keep in mind the global nature of the shipping industry”, says Denso. “Our ships only spend a small fraction of their life in EU waters – our partners and competitors are in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Green Deal has to address these issues.”

He calls for the EU to “throw its political weight” around at IMO, where there is already a lot of discussion taking place on how

to fulfil IMO’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. “We would support the European Commission as much as we can at IMO,” Denso says.

“Having a regional rule for Europe will not solve the problem in a sustainable way.”

Giving an example, Denso notes that the Green Deal suggests, in relation to shipping, some kind of research and development (R&D) fund. Shipping has proposed its own R&D fund through the establishment of the International Maritime Research and Development Board. “We really need this technical revolution and we need R&D – otherwise shipping will not be able to deliver on the goals of 2050. Why not make Europe the place where these new fuels are developed and ultimately brought to the global market, where they are usable by everyone? Why not make Europe the place for R&D?”

Green marine, 3

projects, “where we ensure dialogue and engagement of the industry with the research community”.

However, challenges remain in achieving this integrated approach as it is proving difficult to engage the whole business community on issues. A piecemeal approach might be easier to achieve, but is ineffective when it comes to meeting goals.

“You can’t separate climate and biodiversity when it comes to the ocean, because both are linked,” Valentin says. “There are big aspects of biodiversity and research that need to be deployed with regard to the ocean, and the EU is trying to do that as much as possible.”

The EU, she adds, does have methods open to it if it really wants to apply pressure. But where it can really help is by developing the tools – regulations or ways to engage the different stakeholders – that can then be multiplied and used elsewhere.

“There are big aspects of biodiversity and research that need to be deployed with regard to the ocean, and the EU is trying to do that as much as possible” In short, leadership must be provided, awareness must be built and a high level of engagement is needed, not just with EU industry but with international industry and organisations too.

“Around mobility and transport services and ports, with climate change and biodiversity, there is the regulatory side – but also you need more science in understanding sealevel rise and structures that will be resilient,” says Valentin.

And at the end of the day there is no point in one country doing something for the ocean – all countries need to work in a coordinated manner if green marine goals have any chance of being achieved. ■

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Out-of-the-mould thinking on plastics

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Biotechnology concepts are being proposed to solve the plastics crisis in the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oceans, but the problem and solutions are more likely ashore than at sea WORDS / DAVE BENYON

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PLASTICS

T

he infinity symbol was chosen as a company trademark for early Bakelite plastic products, signifying a vision for long-term applications. Plastics have been around for more than a century, but rather than being a material to last a lifetime, they have become synonymous with throwaway consumerism, heaping pressure on recycling and creating rubbish islands in the world’s oceans, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Between eight and 12 megatonnes of plastic end up in the sea each year. Some 80% of this is estimated to come from on shore, and the remainder comes from marine sources. “It’s certainly going to become a bigger issue before it gets better,” says Stephanie Lavelle, project director and scientific researcher at Sea Sanctuaries Trust.

Public awareness of the threat posed by plastics has increased since the BBC’s The Blue Planet documentary in 2001, adding momentum to efforts to tackle the problem. More recent films such as Plastic Oceans have continued the publicity push, while a raft of initiatives such as Ocean Cleanup and Sky Ocean Innovation have been well reported.

“It’s a combination of consumer, industry and government. It’s one of those issues on which we all need to work together,” says Imogen Napper, an expedition scientist at National Geographic, working on its Sea to Source project, which aims to mobilise a global community of experts to tackle plastic pollution.

“People have begun boycotting products; industry has started to listen and to voluntarily remove some products; and governments have enforced bans in the past few years, such as those on microbead plastics. But the main thing is still getting out there and spreading the message,” adds Napper.

The number of government bodies, NGOs, and academic and

private-sector initiatives looking to raise awareness and find solutions to this crisis has increased dramatically. Working alongside the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), IMO has a leading role.

Get up and Glo In 2018, IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) committed to an action plan to target weaknesses in existing enforcement.

As part of that plan, in December 2019, IMO launched global project GloLitter, funded by Norway’s government, in coordination with sister UN agency the Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Of the 20% of plastics in the ocean that come from maritime

Plastics have been around for more than a century, but rather than being a material to last a lifetime, they have become synonymous with throwaway consumerism sources, the majority, between 50%–90%, comes from fishing gear,” says Fredrik Haag, head of office for the London Convention/Protocol and ocean affairs at IMO. One proposal on the table specific to fisheries is to mark fishing gear so that, if it is discarded, it can be traced to the owner. Haag also emphases GloLitter’s role in tackling a lack of port infrastructure and reception facilities, which can mean waste finds its way back into the oceans.

Lavelle echoes the point for fisheries in particular: “A big problem is that there aren’t many places to recycle fishing gear. I looked at Indonesia and found only one place able to recycle nylon nets, so that recycling part is the big issue,” she says.

GloLitter has a mandate to focus on 10 countries, two each from five high-priority regions (Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific). Its role is to train

administrations, build capacity and strengthen infrastructure between relevant sectors at a national level.

Selected lead countries were set to be announced at the subsequently postponed MEPC meeting set for 30 March, after which the inception phase was due to begin.

“The second half of 2020 is when we start those activities,” says Haag. “Through our Global Industry Alliance, we want to bring in industry to work together with us towards the same objective, to ensure shipping companies, ports and fishing industries are on board as well.”

A targeted approach is appropriate, because studies have shown that more than half of plastic enters the ocean environment from just a handful of countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand, and that the vast majority enters via just five rivers: four in Asia and one in Africa.

“The GloLitter solution will be flexible for different countries,” says Haag. “In some countries they need the framework, and in others they have the framework but not the capacity to implement it.”

Strikingly, GloLitter’s biggest focus is on efforts on shore, not in the oceans. “Any clean-up efforts are good, but a lot of people are saying the solution should be upstream – stopping plastic from entering the ocean in the first place,” says one industry source.

Biodegradable? Really?

Biodegradable plastics are a contentious topic, but more an issue for UNEP than GloLitter.

“Biodegradable plastics are fine when handled the way they are supposed to be, in landfill temperatures, but they biodegrade very slowly at sea temperatures,” the industry source says.

It is a common complaint levelled at the private sector that biodegradables have been more about marketing than science in MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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6glaigh nahEireann IRISH D F NeÂŁ FORCES

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NavalService EngineRoomArtificer TheNaval Service patrols theterritorial waters ofthenationprotecting itsnatural resources, drug interdiction andpollution control, forthisto bepossible shipsmustbemaintained andserviced.

TheIrishNaval Service arecurrently recruiting fullyqualified Mechanics andFitters.

Ifyouare looking foranexciting, challenging andrewarding career.

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NavalService DirectEntryChef TheNaval Service Islooking Torecruitsuitable qualified Chefsto bepartoftheteamthatpatrols andprotect ourterritorial waters if youenjoybeingpartofateamandwantacareer withadifference.

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NavalService Elertrical Artificer Currently there areopportunities forfullyqualified Electrical Technicians withintheIrishNaval Service.

As anElectrical Artificer (EA} withintheIrishNaval Service youwillessentially learn tomaintain andcrew the shipaswellaskeeping itafloat andmoving forward.

ALeading Electrical Artificer (I/EA} willbetrained to perform theroles andresponsibilities ofaI/EAatseaandashore, where selected candidates willberesponsible totheships Marine Engineering Officer fortheInstallation, Operation, Maintenance andRepair ofall Electrical/Electronic equipment onboard.

Through thispathyouwillessentially become anNonCommissioned Officer (NCO} incharge ofyourrespective department.

Ifyouarelooking foranexciting, challenging andrewarding career.

NavalService DirectEntryHullArtificer TheIrishDefence Forces arepresently recruiting qualified Carpenter andJoiners fortheroleofLeading HullArtificer (HA} withintheIrishNaval Service.

AsaHullArtificer withintheIrishNaval Service you willessentially learn tomanage, maintain andcrewtheshipaswellaskeeping it afloat andmoving forward.

Successful candidates willbeprovided withadditional training sothattheycanperform the roles andresponsibilities ofaHullArtificer atSea onboard IrishNaval Service vessels.

Ifyouarelooking foranexciting, challenging andrewarding career.

NavalService RadioRadarTechnician Currently there areopportunities forfullyqualified Electronic Technicians withintheIrishNaval Service.

As aRadio Radar Technician (RRT} withintheIrishNaval Service youwillessentially betrained tomanage, maintain andcrew theshipaswellaskeeping itafloat andmoving forward.

ALeading Radio Radar Technicianwillbetrained toperform theroles andresponsibilities ofanNonCommissioned Officer (NCO} and technician atsea, where selected candidates willberesponsible fortheInstallation, Operation, Maintenance andRepair ofallNavigation andCommunications equipment onboard.

Through thispathyouwill essentially become anNCO RRTwithin theIrishNaval Service.

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recent years, lacking industry-wide standards, leaving companies to conduct their own tests.

“It’s a minefield,” says Napper.

“Plastics companies have claimed we haven’t tested products properly in an industrial composter. Many firms call their plastics biodegradable and compostable, but they’re aware this only works on land or the plastic needs to go through an industrial composter – heat and conditions not found in the oceans. We need to make sure environmental impacts are assessed and laid out in plain English for the consumer to understand exactly what’s going to happen to it.”

Marine biotech PRODUCTION CLIENT

Biodegradable biopolymers represent an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional plastics. Such marine-based biotech has an important role, according to an EU study, ‘Marine Industrial Biotechnology’, published in December as part of the KETmaritime project.

“Recent advances in the production of biopolymers from marine sources such as algae, crabs, shrimp and prawn waste are proving hugely successful,” says Ana Vila, project coordinator at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, one of the groups collaborating on the research report. “Our latest study highlights a number of companies who are already putting the technology into practice, including Netherlands firm Studio Klarenbeek & Dros working alongside Atelier Luma in France to develop algaebased biopolymers to compete with traditional plastics.”

SOWING ‘SYCOMORE’ SEEDS The IMarEST has signed a partnership with Sycomore, a crowd-funding online application for coming up with solutions to specific environmental problems.

Sycomore works as a platform for ordinary users to pose problems, with others pitching solutions, which are then voted for and the winners given financial backing.

On the solutions side, the plan is to engage students, experts and funders to solve challenges linked to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a pilot phase focused on ocean challenges. The partnership works by engaging the IMarEST’s special interest groups and members, including student members, as well as other partners that may come on board.

“Five years ago, I presented to the UN about how to increase

This bioplastics market is led

by PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates) and PLAs (polylactic acids). PHAs are thermoplastics and can be transformed by means of injectionmoulding to produce films and sheets, fibres, laminates, non-woven fabrics and adhesives. PLAs are also thermoplastics and can replace traditional plastics for packaging.

Bioplastics and biopolymers could be worth US$5.08bn globally by 2021, according to the study.

Many countries are implementing policies prohibiting or limiting the use of conventional plastics and encouraging the use of bioplastics.

Naturally occurring biopolymers present in marine biomasses (L–R) Fredrik Haag, head of office for the London Protocol and ocean affairs at IMO; Imogen Napper, expedition scientist with National Geographic’s Sea to Source project; Peter Kershaw of GESAMP, an advisory body to IMO

participation in the SDGs and involve the private sector in a more creative, innovative way,” says Aman Kahn, Sycomore’s founder and CEO. Since then, private-sector stakeholders have become forces for change through corporate social responsibility objectives, “looking beyond their bottom line”, Kahn explains.

“Brands are interested in partnering and associating themselves with being more humane. They are collaborating with responsible influencers, and it’s starting to shift into the academic world. We’re getting the public more involved, so they can contribute £5 here and £10 there; the first corporate brand to sponsor gets its logo on it, and the first fully funded solution wins.”

include chitin and chitosan. The global chitin market alone is expected to reach US$2.9bn by 2027, the report suggests.

Feasibility

Despite the hoopla, sources agree that marine biotech has limited efficiency and scalability and will need to further reduce production costs and improve infrastructures to succeed.

“These applications are around, but they cost more money,” says Peter Kershaw, a member of the Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection, an advisory body to IMO. In 2015, Kershaw wrote a UNEP report on biodegradable plastics and reached the conclusion that they do not represent a realistic or feasible option for reducing ocean plastics.

He acknowledges that the science is constantly improving, but still sees limitations.

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“The big problem you would face is directing microbes to only consume the right plastic... all sorts of essential things at sea are made of plastic, including ships and buoys”

abroad. Like many developed countries, the UK exports more than two-thirds of its recycling to lowerincome countries in Asia that lack the infrastructure or regulations to fully cope.

on marine industrial biotech, also highlights the continued limitations of biotech alternatives to traditional plastics.

“The bio-based plastics sector is developing very dynamically,” the paper notes. “However, bio-based plastics still remain too expensive to compete with conventional fossil plastics. The price is mainly driven by the cost of feedstocks and the processing steps required to generate them. Therefore, the most relevant challenge that must be addressed is the reduction of production costs along the whole value chain.”

Kershaw also highlights another problem of using algae or other organisms to eat up plastic in the oceans. “The big problem you would face is directing microbes to only consume the right plastic. Be careful what you wish for – all sorts of essential things at sea are made of plastic, including ships and buoys.”

Waste streams in the UK lack the capacity to handle bioplastics and compostable plastics, as these all melt at lower temperatures and contaminate PET recycling. So currently, all alternative plastics are being sent to landfill.

“Ultimately the focus needs to be on the fact that we don’t have the capacity, even if collecting and producing waste, to recycle it,” says Lavelle. Less plastic and more bio-alternatives must be part of the answer. “Using plant-based or discarded-waste-based materials, such as corn husks, is a much better alternative as the manufacturing processes are less harmful, but they need to be properly collected and disposed of.”

The way forward will likely require a combination of developing upstream solutions, ocean clean-up efforts and moving away from plastics towards other materials.

Lavelle thinks less use of plastics and fossil fuels is the only solution.

“A circular economy and plastics will always involve a certain amount of waste and injecting virgin plastics, and be reliant on fossil fuels.

Ultimately, we need to encourage reducing consumption all together and promote reusable items.” ■

PET peeves

High-income countries such as the UK claim high recycling rates and well-managed waste streams.

However, the UK currently only recycles high-quality polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, while lower-quality plastics are shipped

Bio-alternatives

GET INVOLVED The IMarEST has launched a new Ocean Plastics and Marine Litter Special Interest Group (SIG) to review common practices across marine sectors and create targeted educational tools to improve understanding of the drivers for plastic generation and environmental importance of litter in order to identify new solutions and best practices. To register your interest in the SIG, contact technical@imarest.org

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Sustainability is no longer optional

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Complaints that the industry has already delayed too much should motivate stakeholders to innovate and decisively push forward on zero-carbon fuels WORDS / AMY McLELLAN

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As governments around the world declare climate emergencies, net-zero targets are made legally binding and investors grow wary of heavy polluters that could end up on the wrong side of ever-tighter regulatory rules, there’s intense pressure on the shipping industry to get its fleet in order.

IMO has set ambitious goals, including a 40% cut in carbon emissions by 2030 and a 50% cut by 2050, regardless of trade growth, with full decarbonisation shortly after. This can only be achieved by improving the carbon efficiency of the world fleet by around 90%, which means switching the bulk of the fleet to zero-carbon fuels.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been much touted as the cleanerburning fuel of the future, but the world has moved on. LNG certainly has an important role to play as a bridge to decarbonisation, but increased scrutiny of its green credentials means the fuel is likely to be superseded in the 2030s by bio-LNG, e-methane and hydrogen/methane blends, which would at least allow reuse of LNG infrastructure, which represents a costly investment.

Shipowners face some big decisions about how to navigate to 2030 and 2050 given the lifetime of assets, the current availability of

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new fuels, their compatibility with the existing fleet and, importantly, cost. For while technological advances and scaling up of production will inevitably bring prices down, it’s clear that there will be no cheap fuel in the future.

Georgios Plevrakis, director of global sustainability at ABS, puts it plainly: “The industry needs to accept that carbon-neutral and zerocarbon fuels could be two to three times more expensive than those currently used.”

Pick a pathway The pathways that shipowners choose will depend on many

different factors, including the composition of their existing fleet and the market they serve. “With short-sea shipping, it’s easier to adapt to low-energy-content fuels which require more storage space, such as methanol or ammonia, because those vessels can do more frequent fuelling,” says Plevrakis.

“For long-haul shipping, however, you would require higher-energycontent fuel, such as LNG, so you do not use a greater percentage of cargo space.”

Whatever route shipowners take, there’s no doubt this transition is going to require huge investment. According to a study from University Maritime Advisory Services and the Energy Transitions Commission, the scale of cumulative investment needed between 2030 and 2050 to achieve the IMO target is US$0.8–1.2 trillion, an average of US$40–60bn

Above: Georgios Plevrakis, director of global sustainability at ABS. Left: Jumbo Maritime is working with GoodFuels to test a biofuel made from forest residues and used cooking oil

Alt fuels, 1

“Hydrogen, rather like nuclear fusion, always seems to be five years ahead of us”

JUMBO; MARINVEST

Mari Kokako, owned

by Marinvest, is a dual-fuel ship built to carry methanol cargoes

annually for 20 years. Achieving full decarbonisation by 2050 would tip the bill into the US$1.2–1.6 trillion range.

Most of these costs – about 87% – will be focused upstream, preparing land-based infrastructure and production facilities for low-carbon fuels. Hydrogen and ammonia have multiple applications in today’s economy, creating synergies and reducing the investment risk, especially in the early phase of the transition.

ABS has identified three fuel pathways open to shipping, with decisions taken now putting shipowners on a journey that may involve a number of different fuels as they move towards 2050. The first pathway is LNG or light gas, which uses LNG as a stepping stone towards bio-derived or synthetic methane and ultimately hydrogen as a fuel.

“LNG is the most mature choice at this time, having already accumulated millions of hours of running time,” says Plevrakis.

“From there we can then transition into biofuel or, in the future, into hydrogen.”

LNG can reduce CO2 emissions by 20% if methane slip is discounted.

Little wonder the industry is devoting increasing amounts of resource to minimising methane slip in order to protect LNG investments from regulatory intervention.

“There are technical solutions to address methane slip,” notes Plevrakis, adding that the potential for future regulatory action is very much “the million-dollar question”.

The hydrogen dream Clean-burning hydrogen is seen by many as the ultimate solution, but it may be a decade or more before it is ready.

“Hydrogen, rather like nuclear fusion, always seems to be five years ahead of us,” says Plevrakis, who admitted he remains a big fan of the fuel’s potential. “I don’t expect it to be part of the energy mix in the next three to five years, because there are barriers on the storage and transportation side that need to be addressed.”

Pioneers are already exploring the potential. Norwegian shipping company Norled is building the world’s first ship powered by liquid hydrogen for the Hjelmeland connection in western Norway, with the ship set to enter operations from 2021. The vessel will be bunkered with just over three tonnes of liquid hydrogen every three weeks, and Norled is working with Norwegian maritime authorities and DNV GL on the handling of the liquid hydrogen.

Norwegian shipbuilder Ulstein has a concept design for an offshore MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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construction vessel with hydrogen propulsion, which will be tested at sea from 2022.

Yet as Maersk’s former COO Søren Toft pointed out in October 2019, the main challenge of new fuels is not at sea but on land.

“Technology changes inside the vessels are minor when compared to the massive, innovative solutions and fuel transformation that must be found to produce and distribute sustainable energy sources on a global scale.”

Norway is working on this. A consortium including BKK, Equinor, Air Liquide, Norled, Viking Cruises and Wilhelmsen hopes to make liquid hydrogen from electrolysis available for commercial shipping within Q1 2024.

The second ABS pathway is liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)/ methanol/ammonia: heavier, more complex molecules with lower energy content. The good news is that these fuels are already mature, have less demanding fuel supply and storage requirements, and are wellknown commodities when it comes to safety handling and fuel standards.

In September 2019, for example, the fifth session of the IMO SubCommittee On Carriage of Cargoes and Containers (CCC 5) completed interim guidelines covering the safety of ships using methanol as fuel, with the ultimate goal of adding a new chapter to the IGF Code as soon as possible, putting it ahead of some other emerging green fuels.

Methanol convert

Patrik Mossberg, chairman of ship operator Marinvest, who describes

Methanol offers shipowners a quick route to lower emissions

MISINFORMATION ON ‘FRANKENFUELS’ Shortly after the January 2020 introduction of IMO’s sulphur cap, it was claimed that new fuel blends designed to be compliant with the rules were emitting higher aromatics – chemicals linked to higher black-carbon emissions – than the heavy fuel oil they displaced.

Environmental groups called on IMO to ban socalled low-sulphur heavy fuel oil ‘Frankenfuels’ due to alleged high black-carbon emissions, which are associated with accelerated melting of Arctic ice. Yet, according to VeriFuel, part of Bureau Veritas, after rigorous testing of thousands of samples of very-low-sulphur fuel oil, none were found to contain more aromatics.

Even so, the row highlighted the complexity of the decisions facing the industry as it strives to decarbonise and the need for regulatory clarity when setting targets. “It’s important for regulators to be very clear on multiple pollutants,” notes Tristan Smith, reader in energy and shipping at the UCL Energy Institute.

himself as an “involuntary ship operator” after he took over the family business from his father, is a self-confessed methanol convert.

With a background in tech and investment, Mossberg brought a fresh perspective to the business, which had been running a fleet of methanol carriers since 2006 and was starting to trial methanol as a fuel in its own tankers. He undertook what he calls a “relatively deep analysis” of alternative fuels. The result?

“We have now stopped investing in other ship types and only invest in methanol ships,” he says.

Methanol is stable at room temperature and more environmentally benign than conventional marine fuels. And as the world’s fifth-largest traded commodity, it’s readily available in more than 100 ports and can be easily transported across logistics chains. Existing assets and infrastructure can be converted at relatively little cost.

“You can retrofit a petrol car to run on methanol for less than US$50, and the cost of converting a petrol station is US$3,000, so it’s an extremely small cost in relation to other types of fuel like ammonia, hydrogen and LNG,” says Mossberg.

Marinvest’s Mari Jone and Mari Boyle vessels, which were the world’s first methanol dual-fuelled tankers, have already clocked more than 30,000 hours without any downtime since their delivery in 2016. In 2019 two new dual-fuel ships were delivered, Mari Couva and Mari Kokako, built by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, with more vessel announcements expected in 2020.

Methanol has about 20% lower emissions compared with traditional marine fuels. Sustainable methanol, however, produced from biomass or renewable electricity combined with recycled CO2, could significantly reduce CO2 emissions on a well-topropeller basis – but this will take time to become commercially viable.

“Rather than wait for the perfect green methanol to be ready, shipowners can switch now to conventional methanol to get an immediate improvement of their fuel’s environmental profile,” says Mossberg.

Ammonia winning on cost

Ammonia is enjoying a tailwind, with its proponents arguing for the fact it’s carbon-free, readily available and, compared with other net-zero fuels, cost-effective.

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“It’s very similar to LPG,” says Tristan Smith, a reader in energy and shipping at the UCL Energy Institute. “There are 3,000 ships sailing with potentially ammoniacompatible engines.”

The big advantage of ammonia, however, is cost. “It’s much cheaper than other fuels,” says Smith. “Shipowners burn heavy fuel oil because it’s the cheapest, so now they will move on to the next cheapest, and when you do those calculations, then you find it’s ammonia.”

The main challenge, however, is that ammonia is corrosive and highly toxic. Indeed, the growing diversity of the fuel mix is a worry for many in the industry. “With all these new fuels, people will need a lot of training to use them or we will see more incidents,” says Captain Muhammad Shafique, chair of the IMarEST’s Marine Fuels and Emissions Special Interest Group.

Yet backers of ammonia clearly believe these issues can be overcome. MAN Energy Solutions unveiled its ammonia-fuelled two-stroke concept engine in late 2018, late 2019 saw a flurry of announcements about ammoniafuelled ship design and 2020 started with news that the Viking Energy supply vessel for Equinor’s offshore operations will be modified to run on a 2MW ammonia fuel cell, using green ammonia produced by electrolysis using renewable energy.

SUBS ART PRODUCTION CLIENT MAERSK

Forest residues

The third pathway is bio/synthetic fuels, which have similar properties to diesel. Investment favours those projects that focus on waste-tofuel or third-generation fuels from lignocellulosic or algae-based fuels, but these are expensive and scalability remains an issue.

Dutch heavy-lift company Jumbo Maritime has worked with GoodFuels to test its secondgeneration biofuel, made from forest residues and used cooking oil, on an offshore support vessel, the Fairplayer. The biofuel is

“The leading part of the industry will be selfregulating, and they will be the ones that find some means to extract added value from being greener” a drop-in fuel and requires no engine modifications.

“GoodFuels could only supply the fuel in the Rotterdam area and the ship had a small project off the Dutch coast, so it made sense,” says Vincent Verdaasdonk, Jumbo’s newbuilding superintendent.

“We had no problems and it all went perfectly.”

In fact, the heavy-lift specialist was so impressed with the fuel’s performance – and its 80–90% reduction in well-to-propeller emissions – that it has now bunkered 400 tonnes. But, as ever, it’s the associated land infrastructure that acts as a headwind on wider adoption.

“Availability is still quite low, which is an issue for the industry,” says Verdaasdonk. “We will all have to work together – shipowners, port authorities, big oil companies and bunkering companies – to get the right products in the right places.”

Making every barrel count

Decarbonisation isn’t just about picking the right fuel; efficiency measures can help future-proof decisions made now about fleet renewal. Greater use of electrical propulsion, for example, can reduce fuel consumption of vessels and minimise their carbon footprint. “The technology is still evolving, but evaluating how to use electrical drives that are

agnostic to fuel supply can be an effective way to future-proof a design,” says Plevrakis.

Meanwhile GreenSteam, a marine data intelligence business, uses machine learning to help crew adjust operations to minimise wastage, reduce cost and cut emissions, delivering fuel savings of 5–20%. This matters because the transition to 2050 is likely to be piecemeal and bumpy, and fossil fuels are likely to play a role for many years to come.

“Compared to IMO2020, this is a challenge on a completely different scale,” says Plevrakis. “We would now like to see greater collaboration between all stakeholders, looking at the entire value chain.”

Captain Shafique agrees: “We have already delayed too much. The various stakeholders now need to join hands and fund research to find a solution.”

Shipowners face some big decisions over the next decade. “The leading part of the industry will be self-regulating, and they will be the ones that find some means to extract added value from being greener,” adds Mossberg.

This is already in play. Maersk, for example, has developed a carbon-neutral biofuel for selected customers, with H&M Group the first company to trial it. It’s likely more companies, facing growing pressure from shareholders and end consumers, will be willing to pay a premium for a greener supply chain.

“Across the value chain, from banks to end consumers, it’s an issue that’s attracting more scrutiny and it’s going to be harder to attract finance if you’re not ahead of the curve on this,” concludes Mossberg.

“Sustainability is no longer an option, it’s a must.”

FIND OUT MORE Discover more insight on alternative fuels for shipping on IMarEST TV at bit.ly/38pi79K MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Building up a ballast experience base

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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The experience-building phase of the Ballast Water Management Convention has so far delivered little in terms of shared, usable data on systems WORDS / CHARLIE BARTLETT

ART PRODUCTION

Of IMO’s many regulations, the Ballast Water Management (BWM) Convention competes with just a handful for the prize of longest transition from adoption to entry into force. It took an incredible 13 years and seven months to move between these two milestones, yet despite this generous lead time, the industry still wasn’t ready for its arrival.

To tackle confusion and inequality – and to give an injection of impetus to the slow-moving Convention – IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) established a ballast water experience-building phase (EBP) through resolution MEPC.290(71) in July 2017 as a means of carrying out a systematic and evidence-based review of the Convention.

The EBP serves a dual purpose: to give ships’ crews a chance to learn to operate ballast water management equipment in all conditions, and to allow Port State Control (PSC) authorities a chance to figure out how to regulate the Convention.

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Slow progress The EBP consists of a data gathering stage, a data analysis stage and a Convention review stage. It began with the entry into force of the Convention and will end with the entry into force of a package of priority amendments introduced based on EBP feedback. Importantly, the EBP does not alter the basic roles, responsibilities, obligations and recommendations under the

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Convention, its guidelines and relevant guidance.

So enthusiastically has the principle of the EBP been embraced by the maritime industry that it is now being applied to a different problem – that of the sulphur cap.

A petition was filed in August by BIMCO, Intertanko, Intercargo, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Panama and the Bahamas to persuade IMO to adopt an EBP for dealing with that other thorny piece of legislation.

However, if flag States are making breakthroughs in ballast water thanks to the EBP, they are keeping their findings close to their chests.

With the period due to conclude in 2021, as yet, none have come forward with new information despite IMO’s time frame specifying that data from the first year of operations would become available in spring 2019. Marcie Merksamer, chair of the IMarEST’s Ballast Water

Hvdt Marine

Ballast Wa ter Management Technology

ACALGON CARBON COMPANY

Management Special Interest Group (SIG), biologist and vice president of EnviroManagement, says that, while the EBP is designed to allow flag State administrations and PSCs to, as the name suggests, build experience, many administrations still “haven’t figured out how they’re going to implement PSC inspections”.

Levelling the playing field With PSCs able to send water samples to laboratories for testing for more accurate measurements, there have long been fears that certain PSCs might claim that a shipowner or crew are not complying even when they’ve done everything ‘right’. For a while, it seemed as though PSC authorities and regulators would be given licence to run away with the issue, without taking into account the fog of war that crews themselves face when trying to operate a ballast water system effectively in all scenarios.

Ballast water, 1 Marcie Merksamer, chair of the IMarEST’s Ballast Water Management Special Interest Group

Room for improvement The EBP has provided some leeway in this regard. If non-compliance is found, a PSC can act accordingly, but if crews and shipowners are following IMO guidance they will not be penalised. Merksamer says: “There’s a lack of experience going in both directions, and I do believe there’s more room for improvement with implementation.”

In theory, the EBP provides the industry with the extra time it requires to get problems ironed out before full implementation.

However, there are still a large number of vessels operating without ballast water systems on board. With the systems which are currently operating, relatively few faults have been reported, says Jens Kohnagel, project manager for ballast water management at classification society DNV GL. “According to our daily experience the treatments appear to be working well. We have over 3,000 systems fitted for our classed ships, and reporting of malfunctions has been less than 1%. So it’s very good at the moment.”

However, there are still concerns about undetected problems such as compromised mesh filters, the first phase of almost all treatment systems, a problem that is considered undetectable from the outside.

Kohnagel reports that while systems monitor the pressure differential between the flow before and after the filter to identify damage or clogging,

If flag States are making breakthroughs in ballast water, they are keeping their findings close to their chests there are weak points that still need to be worked through. For example, a scratch on the mesh filter screen will result in non-compliant water but will not necessarily produce enough of a pressure differential to be detectable. Add to this that UV systems are sensitive to turbidity, and electrolysis is sensitive to salinity.

But, says Kohnagel, ballast water systems can now be optimised for different water qualities – they can perform flow reduction in very

challenging waters, or reduce the treatment dose in less challenging waters. “The breakthrough in this is more related to test water and design limitations. At DNV GL we have worked to understand a better variety of test waters, and we can now make very detailed plans for the test facilities. We see part of our work as validating and arguing for the use of the ‘most probable number’ method for type-approval testing to reduce the energy consumption of UV systems. Our experts see this growout method as a way of preventing over-treatment of the water.”

Disembarking the vessel One emergent discussion is around shore-based systems, which could address a number of woes for shipowners if implemented widely. Recently, Dutch group Damen installed a new Invasave 300 system in the Port of Hamburg, capable of treating water to IMO D2 standard without any holding time.

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to comply with the regulations.

“I see these shore-based solutions becoming a very viable contingency measure for ships that know their systems aren’t working properly,” Merksamer indicates.

Great Lakes SUBS ART PRODUCTION

There are scenarios in which shoreside equipment, if implemented properly, could provide much-needed insurance as the Convention finally enters full force.

But the kinks still need ironing out.

“In the US, if they go for shorebased treatment which then gets discharged into the environment, that’s an entirely different set of regulations,” Merksamer says.

“Would it still be considered ballast water discharge in every jurisdiction?

If you treat it and discharge it from a shore-based facility, it is no longer vessel ballast water, it is an effluent from a shore-based discharger, and that has a totally different set of regulations applicable to it.”

For example, the Great Lakes – already racked with invasive species disrupting the ecosystem – is a challenging arena for ballast water implementation. Merksamer describes the Great Lakes as a “very unique environment” with some turbid areas and others very clear.

“One of the main challenges in the Great Lakes is that you have vessels with very high ballast water pumping rates, and many of the systems which can treat at those very high capacities are chemical-based. The issue then becomes: do you have enough holding time to fully treat the water before the vessel needs to discharge?

It may be an area where shore-based options become viable.”

However only certain types of ship can use shore-based systems. “Bulk carriers and tankers will have to use the system immediately – they have cargo operations which cannot wait on these systems,” says Kohnagel.

“These vessels require immediate discharge of ballast water, meaning

we would need 100% availability with no queues.”

Still a way to go

The scenario remains one of ‘wait and see’, and there is little to point the way in terms of early findings because, to date, no administrations have submitted data to IMO on the EBP. “That could be because they’re waiting until close to the end of the EBP to send the data,” Merksamer says. “There are many possible reasons why IMO has not yet received any data, but we do know that there are countries collecting data and, moving forward, hopefully they will share that data. There is progress, but still a way to go.” ■

FIND OUT MORE Register your interest in the Ballast Water Management SIG at www.imarest.org

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An evolution in BWTS functionality S

hip operators face ever-increasing challenges to meet regulatory demands designed to protect the sensitive marine environment.

Ensuring adequate treatment of ballast water has been a particularly tough task, with moving legislative goalposts when it comes to type approval of systems.

Hyde Marine, manufacturer of the Hyde GUARDIAN Universal Service Ballast Water Treatment System (BWTS), has designed its latest system to overcome such problems.

Completely redesigned to meet the demanding requirements of the new IMO Ballast Water Management Systems Code and US Coast Guard type approval standards, its Hyde GUARDIAN Universal

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Service “marks an evolution in BWTS functionality”, says Hyde Marine.

It features an updated operator interface created using the principles of intuitive design, which it claims virtually eliminates the need for extensive crew training and the potential for mistakes. The system features a dose-based performance claim, allowing flow to be dynamically adjusted based on current water conditions. It also provides a clear indication of when the system is operating outside the tested boundaries through a treatment alarm.

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O For more details of the new system, visit www.hydemarine.com

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Blade runners

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Drawing inspiration from naval applications, commercial shipping is looking at new propeller technology and environmentally friendly propulsion alternatives to reduce underwater noise and vibration WORDS / DENNIS O’NEILL

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Navies and shipping companies have always been united by a common, and constant, search for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Now, a new crossover in the field of propulsion has emerged, thanks to the fact that naval stealth technology can help the commercial sector meet increasingly tough environmental requirements – particularly noise reduction.

“Noise levels in the ocean have been rising for decades due to increased naval and shipping activity around the globe,” explains Dr Stephen Simpson, associate professor in marine biology at the University of Exeter. “Loud sound can cause irreversible damage to marine wildlife through stress, habitat displacement, reduced reproduction and even death. Any way we can find to reduce our acoustic footprint in the ocean will benefit all marine ecosystems.”

At the forefront of this new push by navies and shipping to incorporate greener propulsion is the pump-jet – also known as a hydro-jet or water-jet – which uses a pump to create a propulsive jet of water and a nozzle to direct the flow of the water and thereby the direction of the vessel.

Developed in the 1930s, and familiar as the technology used on MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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high-speed recreational craft such as jet skis, pump-jet technology has been used on nuclear submarines for decades. The primary benefit is that pump-jets reduce cavitation, lessening a sub’s acoustic signature and making it much easier to avoid enemy detection.

Pump up the jam The US Navy currently uses pumpjets on its Virginia-class fast-attack submarines and is expected to carry on using an advanced version on its new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, due to be introduced in 2029.

When it comes to surface naval craft, South Africa’s stealthy Valour-class frigate, built by Blohm+Voss, became the first warship in the world to use pump-

jet propulsion when it became operational in 2006.

The commercial sector’s new interest in pump-jet technology has been led by Wärtsilä, which developed the pump-jets used on the world’s fastest ferry,Francisco, a 99m catamaran that travels between Uruguay and Argentina at speeds of up to 53kn. The company’s new WXJ pump-jet has been chosen for Balearia’s new 123m fast catamaran, Eleanor Roosevelt, currently under construction in Spain, and will power a 100m wave-piercing catamaran ferry being built for the government of Trinidad and Tobago at the Incat shipyard in Tasmania, Australia. The wave-piercer will have a service speed of 36kn while carrying 1,000 passengers and more than 200 vehicles.

In the cruise sector, Portugal’s Mystic Cruises has announced that its first cruise liner, World Explorer, due to launch later this year, will incorporate pump-jet technology to Schottel’s pump-jet type SPJ 30, a shallow-water thruster

Propulsion, 1

PROPULSION

Wärtsilä’s pump-jets include the WXJ series (left), which features an axial pump design that offers an increased thrust of up to 3%, while the improved cavitation margins help reduce environmental impact by lowering noise levels

minimise underwater noise and prevent sea life from being scared away from the vessel.

The company says two Schottel SPJ 82 pump-jets will propel the ship at a near-silent cruising speed of 5kn, allowing it to turn 360° to hold position without having to use its four-blade main propulsion propellers. World Voyager’s sister ship, World Navigator, due to launch in 2021, will use the same Schottel pump-jet set-up.

Anti-cavitation channels Propeller technology is also entering an exciting new era, with a number of interesting innovations coming up over the horizon.

Kongsberg’s Blade Air Emission concept has been used by navies for several years to help reduce and distort vessel signatures. By machining a channel into the leading edge of the propeller blades, the technique significantly reduces cavitation-induced noise and erosion. The idea is now being adapted by Kongsberg to appeal to

commercial ship operators, which are keen to reduce the effect of underwater radiated noise on marine life.

“Underwater radiated noise increases when too much air circulates around the blades of a propeller and the efficiency of the propeller reduces,” explains Robert Gustafsson, senior hydrodynamicist at Kongsberg. “But there is a sweet spot, and we can optimise the propeller using this concept to achieve the optimum noise reduction without affecting propulsion performance.”

Another recent propeller design development comes from joint research by Strathclyde University and Oscar Propulsion – the PressurePores system, which reduces propeller tip cavitation by boring pressure-relieving holes in the blades. The engineering teams carried out computational fluid dynamic analysis on sets of propellers of the same design, using varying numbers of holes on each blade.

SURFACE DRIVES BACK IN VOGUE A number of navies have started adapting a propeller propulsion system for high-speed vessels that was originally developed for racing powerboats in the 1980s – surface drives. These are especially effective for ships with deep V hulls and low power-to-weight ratios. Because the propellers operate half-in and halfout of the water, the engines powering them run under less load than with fully submerged props. Surface drives also have the advantage of reducing drag and draft significantly, making it an ideal propulsion option for special forces operations and emergency relief missions. A notable example of this application is the Super Dvora Mark III fast naval patrol boat (pictured above), used by Israel, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, which has a top speed of 50kn.

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“Remarkably, we discovered that the optimum number of holes can be as few as 17 per blade tip, as long as they are placed in the most effective positions,” says Oscar Propulsion’s CEO, David Taylor. “It’s not a case of simply drilling holes into the blades, as this would affect the propeller’s thrust capability.

This system has a major mitigating effect on propeller cavitation and underwater radiated noise, and can be incorporated into new propellers or added to existing propellers either in dry dock or in water. It works for all vessel types, but is particularly suitable for naval vessels, offshore vessels and cruise ships operating in sensitive marine environments. It can also be applied to all types of propeller, including pods and thrusters.”

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3D printing developments

CLIENT

On the manufacturing front, France’s military contractor Naval Group has successfully 3D printed the world’s first hollow propeller blade using a technique known as WAAM (wire arc for additive manufacturing). The project – part of the EU project RAMSSES (Realisation and Demonstration of Advanced Material Solutions for Sustainable and Efficient

The US Navy’s Virginia-class submarine uses pump-jets originally developed for the Royal Navy’s Swiftsure class

Ships) – aims to demonstrate the benefits of advanced material solutions in shipbuilding for environmentally efficient ship designs, with Naval Group taking a lead on the production of innovative lightweight highperformance propellers.

WAAM uses a robotic welding arm and an electric arc plasma beam on metal wire feedstock to fabricate 3D objects, building them up layer by layer.

The team’s first demonstrator is a one-third-scale hollow blade for a container ship propeller measuring 6m in diameter, printed in stainless

SHIPBUILDING YAMANAKA

PROPELLING PARTNERSHIPS Collaboration is proving key to improving propeller proficiency, squeezing every last drop of efficiency out of these powerproducing pieces of kit.

Tech group Wärtsilä is one manufacturer that has recognised the importance of tactical partnership to boost its propeller offering. It signed an agreement in February this year with Kuribayashi Steamship Co and associated patent holders for the future development, sales and servicing of gate rudders.

Wärtsilä’sintention is to integrate the gate rudders within its propulsion product designs

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steel in less than 100 hours. They are now working to produce a full-scale propeller, which they expect will weigh 40% less than a conventional equivalent.

“The potential of the process revealed by this new work means that we now anticipate unparalleled performance for the propellers of tomorrow,” says Patrice Vinot, propeller manager for the RAMSSES project. Damen, a leading naval and commercial shipbuilder based in the Netherlands, has also recently 3D printed a tugboat propeller using the WAAM process.

The vessel Shigenobu was fitted with the gate rudder for evaluation purposes

as an alternative to the traditional rudder arrangement in the propeller slipstream.

Instead, the gate rudder is installed as a twin arrangement around the propeller.

Gate rudder technology promises the triple win of lower fuel consumption, emissions reduction and better manoeuvrability and course stability in both calm and rough seas. There is also the potential to reduce noise and vibrations.

The combination of gate rudders with Wärtsilä’s propulsion

offerings for newbuild vessels will help ensure compliance with the Energy Efficiency Design Index, although they are available for retrofit on existing vessels equipped with conventional propellers.

On the signing of the agreement, Lars Anderson, Wärtsilä Marine’s director of propulsion, said: “We see great potential in this gate rudder technology collaboration. [This] agreement enables us to support the building of better and more sustainable vessels today.”

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The halcyon days of the Big Four

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The high and lows of White Star Line’s journey from transatlantic liner supremacy to obscurity WORDS / KEITH RAY

ART

White Star Line made its name as one of the major transatlantic operators of passenger and mail services in the 19th century, buoyed by its flagship ‘Big Four’ ships. The famed quartet were heralded as the largest and most luxurious vessels in the world, but their grip on these key liner trades proved to be just a stepping stone to bigger things for competing operators.

White Star Line was owned and run by Thomas Ismay, who proved to be a very ‘hands on’ operator. He even, it was rumoured, built his mansion Dawpool, at Thurstaston on the Wirral, in a position such that, from the top floor, he could watch his vessels crossing Liverpool Bay as they arrived from and sailed to America.

But Ismay’s death in November 1899 heralded a new era for the company, leading it to place an order in 1901 for a new series of four ships which were to be the grandest ever seen. These were to be Celtic, Cedric, Baltic and Adriatic.

The first of the four new vessels, RMS Celtic, was designed for the Liverpool to New York route. It was launched at Harland and Wolff in April 1901 and made its maiden voyage in July 1901. Its tonnage was 20,904grt, its length 701ft (214m) and its beam 75ft (23m). At launch Celtic

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At 729ft (222.2m) and 23,876 tonnes, RMS Baltic was both the longest and the heaviest ship ever built, although it would only hold that title for one year 44

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Celtic pictured at the quayside in Liverpool circa 1904

was the heaviest vessel ever built.

Power came from two quadruple expansion steam engines developing a total of 14,000bhp (10,000kW) and driving twin screws. It was capable of 16kn (18mph or 30kph) and was designed to carry 2,857 passengers: 300 in first class, 250 in second and 2,350 in steerage. In 1904 Celtic set a record by carrying a total of 2,957 passengers across the Atlantic in a single journey.

During the First World WarCeltic was converted first into an armed merchant cruiser before becoming a troopship and finally returning to the transatlantic route in 1916. After that Celtic had a rather chequered career, striking a mine in 1917 with the loss of 17 lives, but the vessel survived and was towed to Belfast for repair. Then, in March 1918, Celtic was torpedoed in the Irish Sea with a loss of six lives, but again remained afloat. This time it was towed to Liverpool for repairs.

Post-war Celtic was involved in two collisions, the first in 1925, when it struck another vessel in the Mersey, and the second in January 1927, when it was rammed in thick fog by the Anaconda of American Diamond Line off Fire Island close to New York. Finally, in December 1928, Celtic became stranded on the Cow and Calf rocks off the Irish coast. It was decided that the vessel could not be successfully refloated so it was abandoned to the insurance company, which declared it a total loss. Celtic was eventually dismantled for scrap in 1933.

Second coming RMS Cedric, the second vessel in the quartet, was launched at Harland and Wolff in August 1902 and made its maiden voyage in February 1903.

With a length of 700ft (213.4m), a beam of 73ft (22.3m) and a gross tonnage of 21,073, it would, for a

History, 1 RMS Cedric circa 1908; the vessel was designed for the Liverpool to New York route

carry 1,597 passengers, substantially fewer than when first built, but generally in an improved standard of accommodation, and returned to its transatlantic role. It suffered another collision in dense fog in September 1923 when it struck Cunard’s RMS Scythia in Cobh harbour, but neither vessel was badly damaged. Its last transatlantic crossing was in September 1931, after which it was sold for scrapping in Inverkeithing.

ALAMY

RMS Baltic – the second ship of that name belonging to White Star Line, and the largest ship in the world until 1905

short time, be the heaviest vessel ever built. Its engines were similar to those on Celtic, being two quadruple expansion steam engines delivering 14,000ihp (10,000kW), but its quoted speed of 17kn (20mph or 31kph) was marginally higher.

Like Celtic, Cedric was designed for the transatlantic route from Liverpool to New York, although it was occasionally used for winter cruises in the Mediterranean. For 11 years the vessel plied across the Atlantic with no major incidents.

Three’s a crowd On the outbreak of war Cedric was requisitioned and converted into an armed merchant cruiser.

Decommissioned in 1926, it was converted, like Celtic, into a troop carrier. However, it was then that things started to go wrong.

In July 1917 Cedric collided with and sank a French schooner, with a loss of 24 lives from the sailing ship, and then in January 1918 it collided with and sank the Canadian Pacific vessel Montreal off Morecambe Bay. In September 1919 it was refitted to

The third of White Star’s quartet was RMS Baltic, launched in November 1903 and taking its maiden voyage in June 1904. At 729ft (222.2m) and 23,876 tonnes it was both the longest and the heaviest ship ever built, although it would only hold that title for one year. Like its two earlier sister ships it was designed specifically for the transatlantic route carrying up to 2,875 passengers. Its power plant was virtually identical to that of its two sister ships.

In 1910 it was involved in a collision with a German steamer, MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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although the damage was relatively minor. Interestingly, on 14 April 1912, Baltic sent an iceberg warning to RMS Titanic, less than 24 hours before Titanic sank. When war broke out Baltic was used to evacuate Americans from Europe, and then for carrying war supplies to the UK from the US. One notable voyage came in January 1916 when Baltic carried US$35m (equivalent to US$3.4bn today) in gold bullion to the US to pay for war supplies. Later the same year Baltic was used to transport the Canadian Expeditionary Force from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Great Britain. Baltic continued in service until February 1933 when it set sail for Osaka in Japan to be scrapped.

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Final arrival

PRODUCTION

The last of the Big Four was RMS Adriatic. At 729ft (222.2m) in length and 24,541 tonnes it was the largest of White Star Line’s Big Four, but was actually the only one which was not, at launch, the largest ship ever built; Cunard’s Mauretania, launched the same day, was, at 790ft (240.8m) and 31,938 tonnes, significantly larger.

Adriatic was, like its sisters, built

by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, and the vessel was launched in September 1906, taking its maiden voyage in November 1907.

Although Adriatic’s maiden voyage was from Liverpool to New York, it then switched to the Southampton to New York route, inaugurating White Star’s Southampton service and the White Star Dock in the port. Adriatic ran the Southampton to New York service for four years until it was replaced on the route by RMS Olympic, at which point it was returned to the Liverpool to New York route. On its journey home from New York on 2 May 1912 it carried rescued passengers and crew

ALAMY

CLIENT

The Royal Mail contract with Cunard required a service speed of 24kn, and it was decided that reciprocating steam engines would not be powerful enough

RMS Adriatic, last of the Big Four, circa 1907

from the Titanic, including Bruce Ismay, White Star’s chairman and the son of its founder.

During the First World War, Adriatic served as a troopship without any incidents, and after the war returned to the transatlantic service. In 1928 it was converted into a full ‘cabin class’ ship, and in 1933, after being withdrawn from transatlantic service, was used as a cruise ship. Adriatic left Liverpool for the last and longest journey of all – to Onomichi in Japan to be scrapped.

Changing times

Cunard’s Mauretania launch marked a period of great change in ocean liner design. Whereas White Star’s Big Four had employed reciprocating steam engines, Mauretania was equipped with steam turbines.

Turbines had not been in the original design, but the Royal Mail contract with Cunard required a service speed of 24kn (28mph or 44kph) in moderate weather, and it was decided that reciprocating steam engines would not be powerful enough.

The direct drive turbines installed in the Mauretania, two high pressure and two low pressure, delivered 68,000shp (51,000kW) at launch, although in operation this increased to 76,000shp (57,000kW).

In 1928 power was raised further to 90,000shp (67,000kW). Initially the turbines drove two three-blade propellers, although these were

very soon changed to four blades.

The turbines certainly provided the required performance, and the 24kn target was easily achieved, representing a major advance on the 17kn of White Star’s vessels.

White Star consequently fell behind. When the Big Four’s replacements came in the shape of Olympic, Titanic and Britannic from 1911, they still relied mainly on reciprocating steam engines, aided by a turbine driven by waste steam from the main engines.

The maximum speed of Olympic was 21kn, compared with Mauretania’s 24kn.

White Star was purchased by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSPC) in 1927. The Great Depression of the 1930s drastically reduced demand for transatlantic liner services, and, when RMSPC found itself in serious financial difficulty in 1932, the business was taken over by Royal Mail Lines Ltd, but that still wasn’t enough to save this transatlantic liner great. By 1933 both Cunard and Royal Mail lines were having serious problems and, with government support, they merged to form Cunard-White Star.

Ultimately, this proved to be the beginning of the end for the White Star Line brand. Cunard gradually acquired all the shares in the joint business, and by 1950 ‘White Star’ had been dropped from the company name completely, sounding the death knell for the once-grand White Star Line.

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COMMENT

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When banana ‘facts’ get bent out of shape CARGO CAPACITY

ART

The devil is in the detail when it comes to calculating the banana-carrying capacity of today’s cargo ships

PRODUCTION

Andrew Tierney Security consultant working on the security of ships, cars and the internet of things, and an engineer who trained on container ships, spending many hours tending to refrigerated cargo

CLIENT

J

ust after the New Year, I saw this ‘fact’ shared on Twitter: “The largest cargo ships can store 745 million bananas in nearly 15,000 containers. That’s about one for every person in Europe and North America.”

As someone who is rather partial to bananas, and who has worked on container ships, this didn’t add up.

First, how many bananas can you store in a container? A standard 40ft container holds around 20 pallets. Each layer on a pallet holds six boxes, with nine layers. There are maybe 100 bananas in each box. That makes 108,000 bananas per container.

A bunch of errors How many containers are on the ship? 15,000 TEU equates to 7,500 40ft containers. So, 108,000 times 7,500 – that’s 810 Megabananas (810,000,000), which is more than the original statistic. However, this is wrong because you cannot fill each container with bananas.

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It’s not because of a weight limit: each box of bananas weighs around 19kg, so each container has 20.5 tonnes of bananas in it.

Even including packaging and container weight, that is short of the maximum load of 28 tonnes.

The limit is the power needed to refrigerate the bananas. Even the largest container ships carrying 15,000 TEU only have 1,500 electrical sockets for containers carrying refrigerated and frozen cargo, known as reefers. With only 1,500 refrigerated container slots available, power can only be provided to 162 Megabananas.

Then, each of those sockets needs power. On average, a reefer socket might use 4kW. But bananas are not average; they are chilled to around 14°C. And chilled containers use much more power than frozen ones, as the temperature must be accurately controlled, requiring the compressors to run full-time.

Bananas also need ventilation to prevent premature ripening, which means you are chilling warm, ambient air. And the bananas themselves generate heat as they ripen. As a result, a banana container takes around 8kW of power.

Taking all this into account, we are now looking at as much as

12MW to keep all these bananas in good condition. Three of the 4–5MW diesel generators need to run in port – a considerable fuel cost. When at sea, the 8MW shaft generator cannot handle the load by itself, so additional diesel generators need to run.

Ahead of the curve A container pulling 8kW of electrical power is going to be dissipating over 20kW of heat. That heat needs to go somewhere. On most ships it goes into the air, which is fine above the hatches, but not below. Therefore each hold needs fans – and a lot of them. None of the ships I worked on could handle a full chilled load below hatches; the air temperature would climb until the point where the refrigeration could no longer work. Factor in the warm climates the bananas pass through, and you probably can’t fill more than 75% of those sockets with banana containers.

We’re now down to around 121.5 Megabananas on the ship – less than 20% of the 745 Megabananas from the ‘fact’ – two for every person in Italy, with a nice pile left over for me. ■

Comment, 1

COMMENT

The risks and remedies of crew injury PROTECTION AND INDEMNITY

Expansive training materials intended for the classroom don’t work on board Stuart Edmonston Loss prevention director at the UK P&I Club

C

rew injury is a critical issue for the maritime industry, with people-related incidents accounting for a large proportion of the UK Club’s claims. Claims include matters relating not only to crew, but also to stevedores, passengers, stowaways and refugees. For shipowners and operators, the financial impact of claims can be significant, in addition to the disruption and inconvenience caused by accidents and illness on board. For crewmembers and their families these incidents can be life-changing. Generally, illness accounts for a large proportion of people-related claims.

Lessons learnt It is important to gain knowledge from real-life situations and incidents that result in crew injury.

The UK Club has developed an animated ‘Lessons learnt’ video series, enabling seafarers to learn from not only their own mistakes, but the mistakes of others too. The videos are freely available to the wider shipping community, giving them enormous reach.

One such real-life scenario involved a fully loaded bulk carrier proceeding at full sea speed in the Mediterranean Sea in conditions of heavy weather. The bosun and a cadet were instructed to wash down the vessel’s main deck and hatch covers to remove grain cargo dust

remaining from the previous loading operations, despite the wind blowing at about 30kn, equivalent to a force 7.

While the seafarers were working on the port side, a large wave shipped on deck, sweeping them heavily against the adjacent cargohold hatch coamings, resulting in both seafarers sustaining multiple injuries.

The seafarers could easily have lost their lives due to serious injury or by being swept overboard. The probability of seas being shipped on deck was not properly assessed and the performance of such a lowpriority task in heavy weather should never have been permitted by the master. Although the seafarers were using safety equipment including life jackets, safety helmets and harnesses, a proper risk assessment would have ruled out this work being carried out in the first place.

Since the first video was launched, which told the tragic story of a bosun who died during a routine lifeboat drill, the Club has continued to receive positive testimonials from members and ship managers who are using the videos in crew training programmes on board and ashore.

Need for new methods From discussions with Club members, it has become clear there is concern over the time commitment required for many training materials and courses.

Long, detailed presentations and reports, designed for classroom training ashore, are not achieving their purpose in the pressurised and time-constrained environment on board.

Aviation shows the way While traditional training practices are still valuable, new technology can enhance or offer a different way of learning. The ability to share short-form educational videos and updates with crew can be beneficial, and there are other interesting concepts available for training, such as gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality. It’s important to focus on what motivates and inspires crew to learn.

The Club has also sought to bring lessons from other industries.

It recently started working with aviation training provider CAE on a human-element safety training initiative based on aviation standards. CAE’s Maritime Crew Resource Management training teaches vessel teams to identify and use all available resources in everyday situations and for occasions that require deep, collaborative problem-solving in complex and rapidly changing situations on board and between ship and shore.

Crew can learn optimal decisionmaking, situational awareness, communications and teamwork, all based on aviation standards.

Every year, the Club deals with thousands of claims using the experience of its professional claims handlers, ex-seafarers and lawyers.

It uses decades of research into loss prevention to develop a body of technical material on maritime risks.

By sharing these experiences, looking at examples and identifying lessons learnt, members, shipowners and operators can identify potential risks and avoid similar incidents. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Engineering needs a talent pipeline for women WOMEN IN ENGINEERING

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It is up to all of us to ensure that both boys and girls are encouraged and supported to build lifelong careers in engineering

ART

Katie Mehnert Founder and CEO of Pink Petro and Experience Energy

W PRODUCTION

e’re living in a time when technology and rising concerns about the environment and inequality are creating seismic changes in business. Corporate leaders and workers are wondering what the jobs of the future will be.

The Oxford Martin School, innovation foundation Nesta and educational company Pearson set out to answer that question. In an extensive study, they found that one of the careers most likely to grow this decade is engineering. That’s good news for the engineering profession, but it comes amid bad news as well. The number of women who are studying engineering and building careers in the field remains far too low.

CLIENT

Gender dynamics Back in 2006, only 3.5% of young women entering college or university planned to major in engineering. By 2014, that number had only risen to 7.9%, according to the Society of Women Engineers. Meanwhile, the figures for young men jumped from 18.4% to 26.9%. Current data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that women hold only 16% of jobs in engineering and architecture.

Women also leave engineering more often than men. A study

by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that women engineers “often feel marginalised,

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especially during internships, other summer work opportunities, or team-based educational activities. In those situations, gender dynamics seem to generate more opportunities for men to work on the most challenging problems, while women tend to be assigned routine tasks or simple managerial duties.”

So while the future economy will need engineers, half the population

discuss how to bring more women to the energy sector, including in engineering jobs. We then put out a report listing key recommendations.

These include creating inclusive workplace cultures, developing outreach programmes to promote STEM education for girls, and developing policies that will foster a work-life balance for both men and women. We also developed a comprehensive approach for how the energy industry can work together to build the workforce of the future.

An equal shot

is not being recruited and retained at adequate levels. This drastically reduces the pipeline of talent to fill these jobs. It also reduces the amount of innovation engineers can bring to their organisations.

Research shows that more genderbalanced, diverse workforces breed greater levels of innovation.

The organisation I founded, Pink Petro, gathered stakeholders to

I’m a big supporter of using metrics to ensure progress. Organisations should set goals and benchmarks and check frequently whether they’re being achieved. As part of this, businesses should gather feedback from employees, including through anonymous surveys that give women a safe opportunity to open up about obstacles they face in their careers.

The world is filled with talented girls and boys who can build phenomenal careers in engineering.

It’s up to us to make sure they have an equal shot at doing so. When we build these pathways, we all stand to gain – our businesses, our nations and the entire world. ■

IMarEST WOMEN’S NETWORK To help address the challenges that minorities such as women face in the workplace and in wider society, the IMarEST has established a Women’s Network. Volunteering for one of its three working groups provides a unique opportunity to drive forward women’s representation in the marine sector and contributes to your professional development. To apply to join one of the working groups, contact the IMarEST executive via technical@imarest.org

Comment, 2

COMMENT

Diversification is key to tidal take-up ENERGY

It’s a case of when, not if, tidal schemes will truly take off on a large scale Martin Murphy Chair of Marine Energy Wales; committee member of the IMarEST’s Offshore Renewables Special Interest Group; and past president and serving honorary treasurer of the Institute

T

idal energy is an extremely attractive source of renewable energy. The global resource is immense, governed by the lunar cycle of the moon around Earth, these in turn orbiting the sun. In discrete locations around the world – most notably in the temperate latitudes – the consequential gravitational effects on the surface water of Earth’s oceans manifest themselves in high tidal ranges and/or in fast-flowing tidal streams typically in locations around headlands or through narrow channels. In this context, it is an appealing proposition to convert the potential energy of a high tidal range, or the kinetic energy of a tidal stream, into useful applications.

From medieval entrepreneurs who developed grinding mills to seek mechanical advantage from captured rising tides to today’s innovators primarily focused on generating electricity, this predictable source of renewable energy continues to vie for a substantive place in the energy portfolio of the future.

Tidal range But it is not easy. Tidal range barrages based on well-proven hydropower technology have been built and operated successfully, for

example the 240MW capacity La Rance barrage in northern France, and similar 254MW scheme at Siwha Lake in South Korea. Nevertheless, as new proposals are considered, one example being in the Severn estuary in the UK, the cost of energy predictions, including the capital outlay, is challenged by a valuefor-money comparison with the huge offshore wind-turbine arrays already installed and planned for construction in the coming decades.

New schemes are being assessed for their potential environmental impact, and work continues to better understand the implications.

However, the ‘utility’ scale factor of barrage or lagoon systems potentially adds a new dimension to the ongoing transformation of energy infrastructure in the UK, particularly given the added opportunity to consider such schemes as energy storage assets to assist in mitigating the intermittency issues with wind and solar renewable energy sources.

Challenging environments For tidal stream technologies (most typically, conventional horizontalaxis turbines deployed in the tidal flow on surface or seabed mounting structures) the working environment is extremely harsh and demands resilient and robust engineering systems. Operating conditions present fast flow speeds, highly turbulent waters and wave interaction (primarily for surface floating structures). The structures must withstand extreme, unsteady mechanical loading and fatigue stress, and their electrical and

The 240MW capacity La Rance barrage in northern France proves the success of tidal range barrages

fibre-optic power and control systems need paramount reliability.

A matter of scale In seeking the through-life competitive cost of electricity generation, tidal stream device installation methods in unfavourable conditions are a difficult consideration. Associated with this is the cost of maintenance in situations where equipment is inaccessible and cannot be readily supported, e.g. by specialist divers. However, the first commercial-scale demonstration arrays of tidal stream technologies are in operation: by SIMEC Atlantis off the north coast of Scotland, and Nova Innovation in the Shetland Isles. Much development work is ongoing elsewhere internationally.

It is highly probable that more tidal range schemes will be constructed. It is a matter of scale where large capacity systems can form part of a wider integrated network; electricity generation is fundamental, but energy storage, ‘diversification’ in hydrogen generation by electrolysis and other localised, commercial economic development benefits will arise.

Tidal stream systems are at an earlier stage of technology readiness, but as the first arrays are demonstrating, they can and will contribute to the renewable energy portfolio. Off-grid and/or island communities are likely to be the first beneficiaries, which in turn will form the foundations for larger-scale systems. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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House ad and ad

VERSION REPRO OP SUBS

TARGET OVER 20,000 MEMBERS OF THE MARINE COMMUNITY

BY ADVERTISING YOUR JOB VACANCY IN

ART PRODUCTION

To find out more, contact Michael Coulsey michael.coulsey@thinkpublishing.co.uk / 020 3771 7232

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The IMarEST’s shared knowledge hub In this section:

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53 The problem of marine noise 55 Branch spotlight: UAE 56 Fellow Q&A: Jim Weedon 58 IUU fishing 60 Plugging the surveyor skills gap 63 Members’ views 64 IMarEST TV: streaming now 65 Institute news

ART PRODUCTION

Observation of marine mammals is a vital part of implementing mitigation measures and protecting marine life

CLIENT

Sound advice

The development of commercial shipping has turned up the volume of concerns about anthropogenic sound WORDS / JON KENNY, NIRU DORRIAN, ASHLEY NOSEWORTHY

H

uman-generated noise in the marine environment has steadily increased as our marine and coastal industries have developed. Recent research suggests the global ocean soundscape is increasing by 3dB re 1µPa (root mean square acoustic pressure in micropascals) every decade, and has identified an exponential increase

in noise intensity every 10 years from shipping traffic alone. In 2014, IMO issued guidelines to reduce noise from vessels.

It is well documented that anthropogenic sound has the potential to negatively affect marine life, most notably marine mammals, which have highly adapted auditory senses and complex vocalisation patterns.

Artificial sound can trigger evasive behavioural responses, potentially causing displacement from habitats, and cause hearing damage.

Not just mammals

Research in this area is ongoing and difficult to conduct given the logistics and ethics involved in determining the potential effects on large marine mammals that cover vast migratory routes with

varying ecology. And it is not just mammals that may be potentially affected: development of scallop larvae can also be impaired, and boat noise can increase stress hormone levels in species of fish and crab.

The effects of anthropogenic noise in the marine environment is a fast-growing area of research as governments, industries, NGOs and private citizens realise that a deeper understanding of underwater acoustics is required to better protect our oceans. As a safeguard against potential harm to vulnerable marine life, many countries, and even companies, have developed mitigation measures when undertaking work in and around the marine environment that may introduce artificial noise.

In 1995 the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) was one of the first bodies to develop and launch MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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guidelines for minimising the risk of injury to marine mammals from geophysical surveys. It was recognised that, as the UK North Sea oil and gas sector grew, noisemitigation regulations for marine mammals found in UK waters had become necessary. Other countries followed suit, with the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, among others, all enforcing their own noisemitigation regulations, mostly focused on geophysical surveys.

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Noise challenges PRODUCTION

While it is important to recognise that geophysical surveys are a source of anthropogenic noise, other activities and industries also require mitigation and regulation. Shipping is one of the largest emitters of anthropogenic noise, while marine construction projects, pile-driving, ship sonar, acoustic deterrent devices used in aquaculture and naval testing all require particular regulation.

Mitigation regulations across various countries comprise different measures to protect marine mammals (and in some locations sea turtles, basking sharks and whale sharks). These differences stem from countryspecific animal protection legislation, changes in politics, research and development within the field, the presence of sensitive habitat and species diversity.

Countries that lack their own mitigation policies tend to adopt the JNCC guidelines, which

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GET INVOLVED The IMarEST’s Marine Mammals Special Interest Group (SIG) aims to bridge the divide between marine mammal conservation and engineering communities. To get involved, join the SIG via the online Member Portal.

are designed solely for the UK and only linked to UK law and licences.

It is recommended that countries with sensitive habitats, endangered or vulnerable species and key feeding grounds and/or migratory routes consider mitigation specific to those locations. And as industry pushes further into the polar regions, mitigation regulations will need to be further specified and potentially dictated by global organisations.

Professional roles Implementing the mitigation measures of various countries is the job of a marine environmental consultant known as a marine mammal observer (MMO) or passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) operator. Requirements for these positions vary; some jurisdictions require formal qualifications and relevant experience, while others do not. Countries with formal mitigation

regulations may require that personnel take an MMO/PAM operator course specific to that country. Many personnel take these courses to a specific standard but work in a global capacity, with few countries requiring evidence that MMOs or PAM operators have experience or formal certification. Training requirements vary across jurisdictions, with New Zealand considered to have the most robust and extensive training programme for these roles.

It requires a minimum of 12 weeks’ sea time on geophysical surveys and a week-long course with an exam before an observer or operator can be deemed qualified.

The offshore environmental mitigation industry has developed

significantly over recent years with the support of organisations such as geophysical survey companies, oil and gas stakeholders, environmental consultancies, recruitment agencies and regulators.

It is recognised across most areas where specific anthropogenic noise activities are occurring that mitigation standards and regulations require strict adherence. Further research is required to provide top-tier mitigation, and structured training and qualification programmes need to be outlined. An industrywide objective to push for data standardisation and training standards would provide clarity for operators, agencies, MMOs and PAM operators. It would aid in maintaining the body of global standards and add legitimacy to the profession of observing.

For many experienced observers and operators, working offshore in a mitigation capacity is a facet of a larger, much broader environmental career. The professional development of these individuals should be advocated for and tracked, with recurrent training in mitigation standards required.

As each offshore area reviews its mitigation regulations, this may result in changes and higher standards for MMOs and PAM operators. ■

Jon Kenny, Niru Dorrian and Ashley Noseworthy sit on the executive committee of the Marine Mammal Observer Association (MMOA), a partner association of the IMarEST. Visit www.mmo-association.org

Interactions, 2

BRANCH SPOTLIGHT

Driving the Middle East’s marine agenda Nikeel Idnani discusses the challenges and opportunities facing IMarEST members in the region

What are the three main issues keeping your members awake at night?

First is the health and safety of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with respect to limited shore assistance and the suspension of embarking/disembarking of ships’ crew, which affects their well-being.

The challenge of keeping staff motivated while ensuring commercial sustainability requires astute leadership during these unprecedented times.

Secondly, attracting suitable talent to operate ships safely at a competitive price point is becoming increasingly difficult.

Thirdly, our members are concerned about a lack of financial incentives for early adopters of safe, technically tested new technologies to galvanise the industry to meet IMO environmental targets.

IMarEST members, other professional bodies, government, schools and industries at the regional level. We organise dynamic technical activities through meetings and conferences.

This has led us to attract new members from across shipping, ports, energy, manufacturing, ship repair, surveying and classification.

The branch’s regular technical and social events are well attended and provide a basis for information exchange and networking. Further, the branch has established itself as an impartial platform to disseminate the world-leading research undertaken by the Institute. We believe that investment in the maritime services environment is the best way to nurture the talent pool and create a solid foundation for marine professionals. This in turn serves to boost our region’s maritime competitiveness, commensurate with Dubai’s ambitious vision of being one of the world’s leading maritime centres by 2021.

How has your branch contributed to the regional maritime cluster?

The IMarEST UAE branch, based in Dubai, fosters links between

How does the branch measure success?

Our success is evident from testimonials issued by respected members of the maritime community

INTERVIEW / CARLY FIELDS

What three adjectives best describe your region?

Dynamic, diverse and inspiring.

endorsing the work done by our branch. We consistently strive to provide a highly convivial professional setting for our meeting sponsors to interact with the Middle East’s ever-increasing and constantly changing maritime community.

We are committed to bolstering lifelong learning for all in the industry.

What challenges does your branch face?

Finding volunteers who have the capacity and genuine willingness to make tangible contributions to branch activities would go a long way in helping us grow.

What plans do you have to develop the branch?

Commensurate with the Institute’s updated brand as the global home for all marine professionals, we will continue to augment the development of marine engineering, science and technology with the region’s shipping community, and to provide opportunities for knowledge-sharing and CPD by hosting free-to-attend technical meetings. ■ Nikeel Idnani CEng CMarEng FIMarEST MBA is honorary secretary of the IMarEST’s UAE branch

UAE EVENTS In 2019, the IMarEST’s UAE branch hosted 11 complimentary technical meetings attended by 1,330 shipping professionals.

Of these, two events stood out: O 13 June – Oil and marine lubricants supplier Total hosted a series of Global Sulphur Cap Forums to help shipowners finalise their compliance plans for IMO’s 1 January 2020 deadline. Experts from Total shared their capabilities at the largest ever branch meeting with a packed room of 210 shipowners, managers, charterers and other industry professionals.

O 22 December – Ninety-three delegates from the Middle East maritime community participated in an ABCON-sponsored branch seminar discussing innovative lube-oil additive solutions which have a key bearing on vessel safety and uptime while simultaneously removing timeconsuming and prohibitive costs associated with unscheduled drydocking.

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“Old-fashioned free thinkers are not welcomed in today’s industry”

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Experience of all facets of the marine industry makes IMarEST Fellow Jim Weedon well placed to highlight potential areas ripe for improvement INTERVIEW / CARLY FIELDS

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What was your first job in the marine industry?

I left grammar school in 1958, aged 16, and joined Hunting & Son as an engineer cadet/apprentice.

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Over your 58-year career, what has been your greatest concern?

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A decrease in practical training and shipboard decision-making being replaced by office-based personnel. I started my career, as was usual in the 1960s and 70s, with a five-year cadetship.

This involved two years at college to achieve my OND in mechanical engineering, 18 months at sea, followed by 18 months working in a shipyard with day release to attend college to achieve marine endorsement of my OND. Following my cadetship, I sailed as a junior engineer for seven months before

taking charge of a watch as fourth engineer. Today, many sea-going engineers go straight from college to being in charge of a watch, which leaves insufficient time to ‘learn on the job’.

Since becoming a superintendent in 1977, I have spent many years working for several major ship-management companies and have witnessed more and more on-board decisions being taken out of the hands of captains and chief engineers.

Often this has led to senior ship staff leaning on an over-reliance on instructions from shorebased personnel and being unable to handle on-board crises independently.

All-pervasive modern communication systems have meant that shorebased organisations demand immediate answers to a problem, meaning that ship staff are

CV: JIM WEEDON Jim Weedon BSc CEng CMarEng FIMarEST retired in 2016 after a 58-year career in the marine industry. His career included sea service from cadet up to chief engineer; and roles as board of trade engineer and ship surveyor, university research project engineer, superintendent, fleet manager and fleet director, managing director of a boiler repair company, marine engineer consultant, and expert witness. He also carried out plan approval for newbuilding and on-site newbuilding supervision.

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My constant asking of awkward questions at management and safety meetings has not always been well received often diverted from the efforts needed to rectify the situation simply to provide responses to shore-based personnel.

This, coupled with commercial pressures, has led to an excessive reduction in shipboard personnel and the creation of a ‘tick-box’ mentality both on board and ashore.

How have your concerns been received by those in the industry?

My constant asking of awkward questions at management and safety meetings has not always been well received. I recall being let go by a major ship-management company and being told by the managing director that I was not a team player. What he meant was that I dared to question company policies which I considered retrograde.

In this position, one of my objections was to do with manning. The choice offered by the company was to remove either the fourth engineer or the

electrician from engineroom complement. I said that neither should be removed.

Do you think enough consideration is given to safety when bringing in new technologies or processes today?

The problem today is that new systems are usually designed and introduced by shipbuilders or engine/ equipment makers without any input from people with vessel operating experience.

Today, cost reduction and perceived improvement in efficiency often carry more weight than safety.

For many years I have raised my concerns regarding a pollution prevention system fitted on large oil tankers. I have written a report outlining the potentially unsafe aspect of these installations, caused by changes to tanker cargoloading practices. This report has been submitted to a number of port State controls, organisations, institutions, classification societies, oil majors and even IMO. I received very few replies and no one would acknowledge there was a problem.

I was informed by one organisation off the record

Fellow, 1

GET IN TOUCH Are you an IMarEST Fellow with an insight to share with the wider community? If you would like to appear in a future Fellow Q&A, email the editor at marineprofessional@ thinkpublishing.co.uk

Have you enjoyed your time in the industry?

that nothing would be done until there was an accident.

In your retirement, are you concerned about the level of knowledge and expertise being lost in this industry?

Over the last 50 years the complexity of the marine industry has increased enormously, while the skill and expertise of personnel on board and ashore has in many ways decreased. For example, previously the engineer superintendents required a first-class certificate, and marine superintendents required a master’s certificate and preferably at-sea experience in the appropriate rank.

However, this requirement has been watered down because of a lack of suitable applicants, partly due to the fact that chief engineers and masters taking up shore employment find themselves on half the salary they enjoyed on board, yet working twice as much. Today, an increasing number of technical and marine superintendents and ISM

Too many of the people I have worked with both on board and ashore are dedicated professionals frustrated by demands from people in authority

auditors are recruited from the ranks of second engineer and chief officer.

Automation has also led to ship staff not being fully aware of how systems work, meaning that they can only react when there is an alarm.

There is also a plethora of competing regulatory bodies today, with the old mainstays of flag State and classification having been augmented by vetting inspectors, ISM auditors and the like.

The industry has changed; the operators have changed, and wellqualified, experienced, old-fashioned free thinkers like me are not welcomed in today’s industry.

I have loved working in the marine industry as it is a challenging, demanding and very satisfying occupation. But too many of the people I have worked with both on board and ashore are dedicated professionals frustrated by demands from people in authority who have access to too much information and not enough intelligence to process this information in a satisfactory manner.

I recognise that the world has changed and the marine industry is no different from many others. Computers, automation, artificial intelligence, drones, robots and so on are all contributing to the decline in necessary human intervention. In addition, modern lifestyle requirements make a career at sea a less appealing option, so there is an even smaller pool of potential seafarers available. However, as an industry, we need to remember that things can, and will, always go wrong.

Therefore, recruiting and providing suitable training for the increasingly small number of ‘necessary’ people is of the utmost importance. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Hiding behind flags

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IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean is aided by jurisdictional complexity, abuse of Flags of Convenience and exploitation of shell companies.

Yet there are glimmers of hope...

WORDS / SAMANTHA FARQUHAR

I

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llegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing encompasses fishing that breaks, or occurs outside the reach of, fisheries laws and regulations.

It not only undermines international efforts to manage fish stocks sustainably and threatens communities dependent on fishing, but has also been linked to organised crime and human rights abuses. It is estimated that US$10–24bn is lost to the shadow economy each year through the trade in IUU catch.

PRODUCTION CLIENT

Southern Ocean One reason IUU fishing has proved so difficult to address is that it takes place in regions governed by international treaties rather than clearly

delineated territorial boundaries, such as exclusive economic zones. This is a particular problem in the Southern Ocean, which since 1982 has been managed by the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), an international treaty with 25 member and 11 acceding states. Full members finance and take decisions on the Convention’s conservation measures and other initiatives and can fish in its area, while acceding states act like observers and cannot fish. Although states not legally bound to the treaty – non-contracting parties (NCPs) – can fish in the Convention area, there is an understanding

Vessels planning to fish illicitly commonly sail under the flag of an NCP when entering the CCAMLR area to avoid coastal state control. These

Flags of Convenience (FOCs) are a major source of income to many countries, even landlocked ones like Mongolia.

Registration can often be completed online without providing a detailed vessel history or being completely open about intended activity. Other benefits of FOCs include reduced taxes and more lenient safety regulations.

IUU vessels exploit the system by switching frequently from one FOC to another, changing their name and owner at each turn, making it difficult for authorities to keep track.

Even if they are caught, questions often arise as to which state should be held responsible: the flag State or the state of vessel ownership. This ambiguity has led to legal cases being dismissed, resulting in

regulations, allowing dangerous practices to continue. Meanwhile, opaque ownership structures are deliberately employed to hamper monitoring efforts and frustrate initiatives to conserve fish stocks.

The new SIG will bring together professionals from across the marine

domain and work collaboratively in support of international initiatives that aim to protect fish as an ocean resource, the welfare of fishers and the prosperity of the sector as a whole.

To get involved, email technical@imarest.org or join the SIG’s dedicated discussion group on Nexus.

that they will cooperate with the conservation measures of CCAMLR, particularly its voluntary catch documentation scheme (CDS).

Fishing by vessels detected operating in the region from NCPs that ignore CCAMLR policies would fall into the categories of unreported and unregulated under the IUU definition. It would further be classified as illegal if the NCP is a party to the UN Fish Stock Agreement, obliging it to abide by regional management frameworks.

It’s complicated.

Flags of Convenience

FISHING FOR VOLUNTEERS The IMarEST is launching a new special interest group (SIG) to explore and address challenges in the fishing industry.

The Global Fisheries Improvements SIG will be chaired by Eric Holliday, chief executive of the FISH Safety Foundation.

The global fishing fleet is estimated to

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comprise almost four million vessels, providing employment for 36 million people. Yet the sector is straining under environmental, social and economic pressures.

Fishing remains a dangerous occupation, and fishing vessels are exempted from many international maritime

SIG, 1

little to no consequence to IUU vessels.

The premise of FOCs has been a topic of long-standing debate among scholars in ocean governance. Some argue they directly violate the 1984 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which states that there must be a ‘genuine link’ between the flag State and the vessel.

Yet, the definition of ‘genuine link’ is somewhat foggy in international law. In UNCLOS it is described only as “a relationship in which a state is able to exercise proper jurisdiction over the vessel”.

The statistics presented below, based on historic IUU vessel sightings (2003– 2017) from public CCAMLR records, illuminate the relationship between IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean and the lack of transparency between FOC and ownership: O 81% of IUU-listed vessels were repeat offenders.

O On average, IUU-listed vessels changed flags and names 7.8 times throughout their history.

O On average, IUU-listed vessels changed ownership

7.06 times throughout their history.

O 100% of IUU-listed vessels were also IUUlisted by at least one other regional fisheries management organisation.

O 81% of the IUU-listed vessels are still in commission.

O Panama, Equatorial Guinea and Belize were the most popular FOCs used by these IUU-listed vessels.

O Recurring ownership of various IUU-listed vessels was observed among a few companies, indicating the presence of organised IUU ownership networks.

This rudimentary analysis demonstrates how FOCs aid IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean as the vessels engaged in such activities flew flags of NCPs to avoid the CCAMLR regulations. It is not inconceivable that some of these vessels were operating for an entity in a state (other than the vessel’s flag State) that is in fact party to the CCAMLR treaty.

However, further investigation would be necessary; ownership records alone are not sufficiently conclusive, as they list ‘shell companies’

– companies registered in one state but running most of their business out of another.

Unethical fishers exploit these legal technicalities and disconnects between flag State, shell ownership state and core ownership state to obfuscate their activities, thus enabling IUU fishing to persist.

Grounds for hope The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Overall IUU fishing in the Southern Ocean has declined since the 1990s. This fall has been attributed in part to the increased adaptive governance of CCAMLR – improved communication and solidarity between associated actors, networks, organisations and institutions – and in part to the increased capacity for monitoring and surveillance thanks to better satellite tracking and drones.

Additionally, recent treaties like the 2016 Port State Measures Agreement make IUU fishing more difficult as ports around the world impose stricter demands for documentation from vessels wishing to offload

their catch. That said, the Southern Ocean is still under threat.

More of the Antarctic is becoming accessible due to melting sea ice. The most extreme projections suggest these ice-free areas could expand by some 25%. It’s plausible that this will attract more non-cooperating NCPs to the region.

Despite calls to strengthen FOC policies to counter IUU fishing, it is an area fraught with complex legalities. If better policies cannot be developed, e.g. to clarify the requirements for a ‘genuine link’, CCAMLR would be better off focusing its efforts on encouraging noncooperating NCPs to align with the CDS or become contracting parties.

The fact that Panama, a state notorious for providing an FOC and one-time flag of choice for IUU-listed vessels, became an acceding state to CCAMLR in 2013 shows this is possible. Since then, however, no IUU vessels reported by CCAMLR were flying its flag. Clearly, leveraging existing treaties and encouraging greater participation will be vital in the ongoing fight against IUU fishing. ■ Note: This article is an abridged version of a Marine Technical Note by Samantha Farquhar, a reader at the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington, and co-authors.

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How a new apprenticeship is plugging the surveyor skills gap

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The Trailblazer-led scheme hopes to make up the shortfall left by a declining number of UK merchant navy officers WORDS / ALAN CARTWRIGHT

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A shortage of qualified and experienced UK maritime professionals is leading to recruitment challenges across the sector for a variety of UK companies and organisations.

In 2015, the IMarEST and Matchtech Group (a recruitment and placement company) published a report, Mitigating the Skills Gap in the Maritime and Offshore Oil & Gas Market, based on the findings of a study into the skills gaps that had become evident in a variety of professional maritime sectors.

One of the key causes of the skills gap identified

PRODUCTION CLIENT

Alan Cartwright is director of Blabey Engineering Limited, chair of the IfATE Trailblazer Group: Marine Surveying, and chair of the IMarEST’s Small Ships Special Interest Group

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in the study was the downturn in the number of UK merchant navy officers that had been recruited and retained from the mid 1980s, which had led to a significantly lower number of experienced and qualified maritime professionals ‘coming ashore’ to take up employment.

Strategic limitation The situation has not improved since then, and the shortage of UK candidates for roles is understood to be leading both to significant challenges for employers across a wide variety of companies and organisations, and also to lack of opportunity for young people in the UK. There has certainly been an increase in merchant navy cadetship recruitment and placement as a result of government funding for cadet placement and tonnage tax available to UK-based shipping companies. However, the recruitment needs of key UK maritime businesses and organisations continue to be thwarted by a shortage of experienced seafarers, a lack of experienced personnel from ship and boat yards, and the lower

proportion of UK students wishing to study the ‘harder’ STEM subjects.

The National Workboat Association, which represents the owners and operators of the UK’s many thousands of small ship and workboat operators, has identified that the shortage and increasing age profile of marine surveyors presents a strategic limitation on the viability of this busy sector of UK maritime activity and productivity.

Similarly, in the case of larger ships, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has, for years, had to prioritise recruitment from overseas, due to the lack of suitably experienced UK seafarers available to qualify as marine surveyors. Further, classification societies and P&I clubs now recruit primarily from graduates in naval architecture (or associated subjects) and then provide expensive in-house postgraduate training programmes, only to see their qualified surveyors leaving when more attractive propositions appear on the horizon.

Finding a solution Marine surveying is a highly respected, demanding and

The MCA has, for years, had to prioritise recruitment from overseas, due to the lack of suitably experienced UK rewarding profession in which the professionals employed contribute substantially to safety at sea for ships, seafarers and the public. However, various studies, including the IMarEST/Matchtech report, have found that not enough people with the right knowledge, qualifications and experience are being attracted to, or are available to fill, the positions needed to keep the UK shipping, workboat, pleasure and leisure sectors working.

As chair of the IMarEST’s Small Ships Special Interest Group, and having been involved in maritime education and training at Warsash Maritime Academy, I was asked to help put together an apprenticeship route for prospective marine surveyors using the UK government-supported and funded Trailblazer scheme that has proven successful for other professions in the maritime world.

Apprenticeship, 1

As the apprenticeship developed, it became clear that the level of knowledge and professional competence required set this profession and apprenticeship at ‘Level 6’

In December 2017, the IMarEST sent out a calling notice to relevant organisations, and it held the first Trailblazer industry-led meeting in January 2018 to start the process of identifying the following, as required by the UK’s Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE): O the occupational standard for a marine surveyor; O the key duties of the marine surveyor; and O the underpinning knowledge, skills and behaviours.

The Trailblazer Group used MCA, International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) and other significant employer recruiting and standards publications as source

documents for the development of an apprenticeship, ensuring that the largest majority of prospective employers’ requirements would be covered and included.

Degree apprenticeship As the apprenticeship developed, it became clear that the level of knowledge and professional competence required set this profession and apprenticeship at ‘Level 6’ – with the academic content equating to a UK honours degree. This, not entirely coincidentally, provides for registration as a UK Incorporated Engineer and Member of the IMarEST and is the same professional level as required by the MCA for its best-qualified surveyors and many IACS members.

With key support from Di Fitch, who was running an EU-funded ‘Maritime Superskills’ project at Liverpool John Moores University and had great experience in IfATE processes and procedures, the Trailblazer Group compiled the apprenticeship’s documentation and application. This led to the UK education minister granting approval for a degree apprenticeship in marine surveying in July 2019.

Now, the MCA, IACS members, P&I clubs and

The Trailblazer Group used MCA, IACS and other significant employer recruiting and standards publications as source documents

other companies and organisations have the opportunity to recruit, mould, educate and train their own marine surveyors, in addition to the recruitment of merchant navy officers, graduates in naval architecture and suitably qualified and experienced personnel from the UK’s few remaining shipyards.

All while drawing down government funds of up to £24,000 towards the cost of the training courses.

We and all the Trailblazer Group members very much hope that this apprenticeship helps to fill the skills gap in marine surveying by providing the opportunity for a rewarding and interesting career for UK professionals. ■ MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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6–17 JULY

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A fully interactive online event held over two weeks exploring the latest across marine engineering, science and technology

PRODUCTION CLIENT

Over the course of two weeks, we will utilise a mixture of live formats – webinars, live debates, one-to-one talks with experts, and panel discussions – to provide delegates with a flexible and unrivalled opportunity to participate in debates, learn about subjects outside their day-to-day work, and make new professional connections.

The conference programme, which is subject to change and will be published soon, will cover a range of streams, including: O Careers O Coast and ocean mapping and hydrography O Decarbonisation O Digitalisation O Engines and propulsion innovation O Forward steps in vessel design O Green marine O Human element O Navigating ballast water management O New currents in naval and defence engineering O Safer crew and vessel operation O Servicing the offshore oil and gas sector O Ship maintenance strategies O The future of ocean science

THE IMarEST ANNUAL CONFERENCE APP This year, we will be utilising an exciting new conference app to simplify delegates’ attendance and participation, alongside our IMarEST TV live-stream platform. Our app incorporates a number of features, including: O Dashboard: A tailored dashboard with personalised content, the latest news and social feeds, and a customised event itinerary.

O Agenda: Delegates can view session, stream and speaker details, create their own itineraries and see what’s coming up next.

O Directory: The option to share your information and connect with one another using personal messaging and by posting to social media.

O Notifications: Push notifications sent straight to your phone to alert you to session start times.

O Exhibitors and sponsors: The ability to review exhibitor and sponsor details.

Register for the event now at bit.ly/3bPdmrH

INSTITUTE OF

MARINE MARINE PROFESSIONAL Engineering . Sc,ern &Technology

To hear more about how to partner with the IMarEST on the Annual Conference, please contact: Michael Coulsey on 020 3771 7232 or michael.coulsey@thinkpublishing.co.uk

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IMarEST Annual Conference 2020

Murmurs, 1 VERSION

MEMBERS’ VIEWS

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hen personnel are well trained in safety matters and there are effective measures in place to control personnel activities considered risky or access to locations considered hazardous, the safety record is generally good. When the approach to training is more basic and targeted at punishing personnel who are caught breaking the rules, it is often not.

As an example, I looked at two different sites operated by the same company on the same project but in two different countries.

Site A was located in a country with a very poor safety record, and site B was located in a country with an established safety culture.

At Site A it was understood early in the project that safety would be a problem and a rigorous safety culture was established on-site that included comprehensive training of all personnel, random breath tests for alcohol, identification of hazardous locations, regular updates of safety matters or safety awareness, and controls for personnel required to access locations considered hazardous.

Non-compliant personnel were provided with

The reality is that executives want to find a way to avoid the cost of safety if it affects the bottom line

Marine murmurs THIS ISSUE’S QUESTION

Is penalisation an effective tool to raise safety compliance?

The team at Marine Professional is always keen to hear your thoughts on the most pressing issues in the industry. Get in touch by emailing marineprofessional@thinkpublishing.co.uk or via the Marine Professional weekly newsletter, published every Friday afternoon (UK time)

further training before being allowed back onsite. Repeated breaches would result in dismissal.

Over a three-year period, the safety record was good, with only minor accidents on-site.

Site B had an established safety culture and generally a good safety record.

Training was at a basic level that complied with industry norms. Areas considered hazardous were restricted and special passes required. Noncompliant personnel were dismissed. Personnel who raised safety issues were challenged by the safety department and told that if things were not safe, they were not working in accordance with requirements and risked dismissal. This system was reactive, fixed and could not be adapted to suit

changing circumstances.

During a load-out an instruction was issued that only authorised personnel were allowed access to the load-out area; any other personnel found in the area would be dismissed. However, the only personnel aware of this were those given authorisation to be in the area. As a result, there were a lot of sightseers and risks to personnel were considerable. The load-out had to be stopped until non-essential personnel were removed from the area, barriers erected and a simple ‘T’ Card system set up.

So, while punishment must always be available, it should only be used as a last resort.

Prevention is far better than punishment.

Christopher Bolton MIMarEST

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ith today’s emphasis on cash-flow and profit, safety takes a back seat. The reality is that executives want to find a way to avoid the cost of safety if it affects the bottom line. Also, insurers tend to have many clauses stating that they are not financially liable.

Penalties in real terms have very little effect, as corporations often have bigger and brighter teams to oppose any government crackdown. And, of course, management do not have their qualifications removed if they end up with a major disaster.

John Anthony Fahy FIMarEST

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hipping companies have a duty of care to ensure their vessels are operated and maintained in full compliance with classification rules and IMO regulations. Failure to comply with IMO regulations within the allotted time frame should be a ‘condition of class’ and should render the vessel ‘out of class’.

John Pearce MIMarEST

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enalise the responsible individuals, those people that do not disseminate requirements and do not delegate responsibility to implement. It’s simple; however, authorities do not follow through. A safety culture starts at the top, but, for me, 50 years of marine engineering and management experience tell the story of resistance to change.

Roger Ramsay MIMarEST MARINE PROFESSIONAL

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Visit www.imarest.org/tv to view lectures, conferences and webinars AGM celebrates online first

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In a landmark move, on 2 April, the IMarEST held its 131st Annual General Meeting as a remote meeting for the first time in its history. Viewable on IMarEST TV, the meeting was attended by more than 50 members and was hosted by immediate past president Andrew Tyler.

During the discussion, board chair Richard Vie thanked chief executive David Loosley for his “amazing work” since November 2011. “He will be sadly missed but of course we wish him all the best in his new position in Denmark.” David is leaving to start a new role with BIMCO later this year.

In his speech, David explained the progress against the Institute’s three strategic goals and said that it has been a privilege to lead the Institute through a “very exciting time”.

He also spoke to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and said that the IMarEST’s investment in technology over the last few years had allowed a “seamless” switch to remote working for the executive team. “Morale is high and the team is working on some exciting initiatives,” he added.

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Complex control systems explained The IMarEST’s Aberdeen Maritime Branch was due to hold a face-to-face meeting in Q1 2020, but, when COVID-19 hit, the branch moved swiftly to hold a virtual meeting instead.

Luca Pivano, principal specialist in dynamic positioning simulations, control systems and cybernetics advisory at DNV-GL, presented a webinar on ‘Assurance of complex control systems for ships and offshore installations’ to 70 live viewers from 14 countries.

Pivano explained how operators are facing new challenges, including more software and increasingly complex systems and functions.

Software errors and system integration problems can, he said, quickly develop into non-productive time, equipment damage, incidents or accidents.

In his webinar, which is available to view on IMarEST TV, Pivano explains the usefulness of simulator-based testing with digital twins and the importance of ensuring transparency and dialogue between equipment manufacturers, yard, owner and charterer.

Honorary treasurer Martin Murphy followed, saying that the financial year ending September 2019 was a good year for the Institute with a positive net movement of funds.

After the formal business of the meeting was concluded, president Kevin Daffey proposed a vote of thanks to Andrew and reflected that it has been “a real privilege to have someone of your considerable experience and distinguished profile as our president”. On behalf of the Institute he thanked Andrew for his remarkable services.

Andrew responded that his presidency had been “such an enjoyable experience”, adding: “My special feature this year was to start the journey on addressing gender diversity in the

Institute. I’ve said that this was going to be a generational endeavour, but I hope that we’ll look back on 2019 and 2020 as the years when we really started to address this issue.”

Andrew then formally introduced Kevin as the Institute’s 118th president. Kevin took the opportunity to introduce initiatives that he would like to focus on this year, centring on technology and how it can be used to overcome the challenges faced by the sector.

As a first and immediate step, he has set up a taskforce dedicated to finding answers to “the certification conundrum restraining the use of AI in the marine domain”.

The presidential taskforce’s first work item will be to produce a white paper that will address some of the key barriers to the adoption of AI in the marine sector. ■

News, 1

MEMBER UPDATE

IMarEST welcomes new NGO partners The Institute has welcomed three new non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners in support of marine conservation and ocean literacy. Friend of the Sea certifies sustainable seafood and ocean-friendly products and services. Centro Studi e Ricerca Ambiente Marino (CE.SRAM) organises marine training courses and internships at a variety of establishments such as universities and research centres. Associazione Mediterraneo Ricerca e Sviluppo (Me.Ri.S.) is a research organisation centred around the protection of marine mammals and their environment.

The IMarEST’s NGO partnership scheme is open to all NGOs operating in the marine science and conservation sector to support capacity building and professional development and to help deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (in particular, Goal 14: Life Below Water).

Support the Guild of Benevolence The support offered by the Guild of Benevolence will be crucial to many vulnerable individuals in the wider marine community, now more than ever, as the impacts of COVID-19 are felt.

We ask members who have been affected and are in need of assistance to apply for support. If you are aware of anyone that is in need of assistance from the Guild, please ask them to contact us.

With no government funding, the Guild relies on support from members. Please help them to continue their valuable work in giving the support that will be required during these challenging times. A donation to the Guild will be very much appreciated and put to good use, going to your fellow marine professionals.

O Donate at www.imarest.org/guild

Stay connected and productive during the pandemic As we face a major health, economic and social challenge over the coming months, we want to remind you, as an IMarEST member, that you are not alone. You are connected to a global community of marine professionals and you have access to a range of tools, technologies and resources to help you stay connected and productive during the challenging times ahead.

We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of your resources, benefits and corresponding instructions at bit.ly/3fKppKe. Visit the page to: O manage your membership online; O connect and network with other members online; O discover our Special Interest Groups; O engage with your local branch; O explore hundreds of talks and lectures; O develop your skills through online learning; and O expand your knowledge across the breadth of marine.

New chair for Maritime Cyber Risk Management SIG Ian Bramson, ABS Group Global Head of Cyber Security, has been appointed chair of the Maritime Cyber Risk Management Special Interest Group (SIG).

Bramson has been solving cybersecurity challenges for more than 20 years and will lead the SIG’s work in appraising emerging cyber-risks and improving overall safety at sea.

With the technical complexity of maritime assets increasing, including the convergence of information technology with operational technology, the threat of cyber-attacks is omnipresent.

The SIG will work together to identify and evaluate new risks, develop preventative guidance and offer practical remedies for marine engineers, scientists and technologists.

“I am honoured to be joining as the new chair of the Maritime Cyber Risk Management SIG,” said Bramson. “I look forward to working alongside my fellow members as we fulfil our objectives to establish the awareness of cyber-threats, confirm best practices and improve organisational training both on board and ashore.”

The Maritime Cyber Risk Management SIG is currently shaping its agenda, with plans to provide independent technical advice to ongoing regulatory work in IMO guidelines.

O Find out more at www.imarest.org/sigs

ONLINE EVENTS 30 JUNE 2020 Stanley Gray Lecture: Following the Southward Migration of Gray Whales 6–17 JULY 2020 IMarEST Annual Conference 2020 15 JULY 2020 Stanley Gray Lecture: Hacking Ships’ Bridges 6–8 OCTOBER 2020 INEC/iSCSS 2020 – International Naval Engineering Conference/ International Ship Control Systems Symposium O To register for any of these online events, please visit www.imarest.org/events

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“It’s an amazing feeling seeing my designs and ideas become a reality” Naval architect Dr Rachel Nicholls-Lee revelled in pushing the boundaries for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project

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way through to obtaining the raw materials, manufacture, use and finally decommissioning.

INTERVIEW / CARLY FIELDS

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What is your current role?

I’m the owner and director of a naval architecture consultancy, Whiskerstay Ltd. Work can vary from day-to-day running of the company through to business development, and evidently naval architecture. Projects range from more normal tasks, such as stability assessments, experimental tank testing and analysis of marine renewable energy devices, to the full design of a highly novel vessel.

I thrive on the variety of jobs and it keeps me focused. It’s an amazing feeling seeing my designs and ideas become a reality.

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What was the most challenging project you’ve worked on?

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship.

The vessel is due to recreate the voyage of the original Mayflower across the Atlantic in September 2020, as part of the 400th anniversary celebrations. The original Mayflower pushed the boundaries of what was considered possible at the time, and the new vessel is aiming to follow on from this pioneering pedigree and push the 21st century’s boundaries by completing the several thousand mile crossing entirely unmanned and piloted by artificial intelligence.

It is a real challenge to design a vessel that can complete the voyage successfully without going overboard on redundancy – with

There is considerable interest in, and support for, the automotive sector going electric, but little for marine, and I cannot fathom why 66

Dr Rachel Nicholls-Lee CEng MRINA is director of Whiskerstay Ltd regards to the structure, propulsion system or navigationally – but also make it look cool!

What’s the most unusual place you’ve ended up in your career?

In the bilge of one of the little ships of Dunkirk. Early on in my career I was involved with the naval architecture side of the refit of one of the vessels. I went to look at various areas in order to properly undertake the relevant calculations and complete drawings. It was a real privilege to play a small part in the vessel’s history.

What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the industry?

There is a lot of interest in emissions and carbon footprint. I strongly feel, however, that all too frequently people look at snapshots of situations and miss the big picture.

I feel that ‘through-life carbon footprint’ is really the key factor that needs considering – this being the carbon footprint from the first conception of something all the

And the biggest opportunities?

I feel that electric boats have considerable potential. Even just considering the possibilities locally, here in Falmouth, UK, there are many craft that could reap the benefits of going electric: day-hire boats, water taxis, short-hop ferries and leisure craft could all benefit from the noise and emissions reductions, alongside the reduction of maintenance costs. Cornwall has an excess of renewable energy which could, potentially, be used to facilitate charging points. Tugs and commercial craft could be moved over to hybrid propulsion and a lowemission zone could be introduced.

There is considerable interest in, and support for, the automotive sector going electric, but little for marine, and I cannot fathom why.

Who is your maritime hero?

No one person, but all the ladies who were part of Team SCA – the first all-female team to compete in the Volvo Ocean Race in 12 years – for highlighting the gender-equality gap in offshore racing and the marine industry as a whole. They inspired and empowered women from all walks of life – and continue to – and show that women can be amazing and do amazing things.

What is your favourite craft?

The America’s Cup yachts. They are always evolving and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the marine industry, taking advantage of cross-disciplinary research and techniques from other industries. ■

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