THE shipping industry today reflects on the essential work of seafarers keeping global trade afloat while 1.6 million of them at sea endure working conditions that would provoke international outrage should they enforced on land.

Despite an unprecedented outpouring of platitudes and strong words, the crew-change crisis has left seafarers facing abandonment, cancelled repatriation, severe social isolation, and routine unending fatigue as a daily reality. 

We are seeing vaccinations starting to happen in some ports. However, the issue is getting worse again, not quite to the peaks we saw where over 400,000 crew left stuck at sea, but celebrating a slightly better humanitarian crisis seems something of a hollow victory

Meanwhile the levels of exhaustion are now widely considered to be a significant threat to maritime safety.

So with that in mind, we’ve gone straight to the top this week and asked the International Maritime Organization secretary-general, Kitack Lim to come on the podcast and talk about the issues affecting crew.

Obviously the crew-change crisis is where we start, but we also felt it important to raise the growing crisis of seafarer abandonment and ask why the IMO is seemingly unable to force governments to publish the findings of its own casualty investigations to prevent future accidents from occurring.

We also talk about the IMO’s somewhat battered image in the mainstream press and why the glacial pace of progress on climate change is so dangerous.

While we have your attention, can we also urge all podcast listeners to register for our next FREE webinar.

As part of our Future of Shipping Series, we are turning our attention to the question of how to innovate in shipping. We will be discussing how best to overcome the blockers and siloes preventing entrepreneurial ideas reach their full potential in the maritime space with industry leaders from Eastern Pacific Shipping, MSC, Lloyd’s Register and Rainmaking.

Register now and get your questions for the experts ready.

Sign up here.