Category Archives: Nautical Institute

Increas­ingly, Mas­ters are find­ing them­selves at the pointy end of crim­i­nal charges, fac­ing heavy fines and impris­on­ment for pol­lu­tion inci­dents and shipown­ers need to stop pay­ing lip-service to anti-pollution reg­u­la­tions and get their act together, says the Nau­ti­cal Insti­tute.

In an arti­cle in the Octo­ber issue of Sea­ways, the institute’s mag­a­zine, the NI says that shipown­ers need to get seri­ous, and impress that seri­ous­ness on their crews. They need to make sure the right equip­ment and the right train­ing is given and, says Cap­tain Harry Gale, NI Tech­ni­cal Man­ager “Rules and man­age­ment sys­tems do not work in iso­la­tion. Urgent action is needed to ensure that peo­ple onboard have the equip­ment, the guid­ance, the moti­va­tion and empow­er­ment needed to act on pollution”.

In a stte­ment, the NI says: “With so much atten­tion across ship­ping focus­ing on the envi­ron­ment, there seems to be more than just pol­lu­tion in the air, there is a real sense of urgency to make improve­ments and to make the cur­rent rules work.”

In explor­ing the issues and prac­ti­cal­i­ties of day-to-day envi­ron­men­tal ship­board man­age­ment, the NI’s SeaGo­ing Cor­re­spon­dence Group (SGCG) has raised a num­ber of con­cerns and has iden­ti­fied some dis­con­cert­ing trends.

In exam­in­ing why there appear such dif­fi­cul­ties in com­ply­ing, there are report­edly repeated fail­ures by many own­ers to engage in a pos­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of the rules and pro­ce­dures, and to com­mu­ni­cate these to their shipmasters.

Envi­ron­men­tal excel­lence and com­pli­ance shape our “green cre­den­tials”, it is vital there­fore that in the face of vig­or­ous polic­ing and enforce­ment that pol­lu­tion pre­ven­tion require­ments must be matched by pos­i­tive onboard sys­tems and encouragement.

The NI has iden­ti­fied a num­ber of poten­tial pit­falls in ensur­ing com­pli­ance, and these include poor equip­ment and main­te­nance, pro­ce­dural prob­lems and out dated prac­tices, through to ill equipped port facilities.

In addi­tion, own­ers need to con­vince those onboard that they are truly seri­ous about tack­ling pol­lu­tion. Com­pa­nies can­not sim­ply pay lip ser­vice to the rules, and tan­gi­ble action is needed to guard against com­pla­cency, to mit­i­gate the risks of mis­takes, and to guard against errors of judge­ment. With the risk of enor­mous finan­cial penal­ties and with jail time a real pos­si­bil­ity, own­ers who sim­ply relax and assume all is in order can get a real shock when things go wrong.

How­ever, not all the prob­lems stem from equip­ment or pro­ce­dures, and the NI regret­fully recog­nises the age-old “can do” atti­tude of many sea­far­ers can be dam­ag­ing. In too many instances there appears the prob­lems of fal­si­fied records, and of a con­tin­ued will­ing­ness to do what is thought best by an indi­vid­ual, even when that flies in the face of the Safety Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SMS).

Accord­ing to Cap­tain Gale, “Envi­ron­men­tal crimes are sadly tar­nish­ing the image of ship­ping. It is vital to remem­ber that respon­si­bil­ity always rests with the owner, and it is not sim­ply enough to put sys­tems onto the ship – these need to be sup­ported and made to work, to ensure the actions of those onboard are always the right actions”.