A new briefing paper by the Maritime Professional Council of the UK warns that reducing mandatory seagoing service for Officer of the Watch (OOW) candidates risks weakening safety standards across the shipping industry at a time when regulators should be reinforcing competence, not diluting it.

According to the Council, the decision at IMO sub-committee level to reduce required seatime for STCW II/1 candidates from 12 months to 9 months, with simulator training allowed to substitute for part of that period, represents a serious step in the wrong direction. The Council argues that shipboard experience is not an optional add-on to maritime education but the foundation on which judgement, situational awareness, resilience and safe watchkeeping are built.

The briefing paper draws on the experience of master mariners and maritime educators within the Maritime Professional Council and relies heavily on a submission to IMO by The Nautical Institute. It argues that no convincing evidence has been produced to show that a reduction in sea service can be made without lowering safety margins for newly qualified officers who may soon find themselves alone on the bridge of large commercial vessels.

While recognising that simulators are useful training tools, the Council says they cannot reproduce the accumulated effects of fatigue, the pressure of real accountability, the physical realities of shipboard life, or the gradual development of what generations of seafarers have described as a seaman’s eye. The paper warns that over-reliance on simulator time risks creating overconfidence without equivalent depth of experience.

The Council is also concerned that key industry voices appear to have been largely absent from the debate. In particular, the paper highlights the lack of visible participation by insurers, P&I Clubs and classification societies, despite their extensive knowledge of casualty patterns, operational risk and the cost of failure at sea. In the Council’s view, any proposal to cut practical training time should be tested against hard safety evidence from those sectors before being progressed further.

The paper further argues that the move sits uneasily with the IMO’s core purpose of encouraging and facilitating the highest practicable standards of maritime safety and efficiency of navigation. If the underlying pressures are a shortage of training berths, smaller crews, heavier administrative burdens and reduced mentoring capacity on board, the Council says those problems should be addressed directly rather than papered over by cutting required sea time.

A spokesperson for the Maritime Professional Council said: “Maritime safety depends on competence that has been earned in the real operating environment. Reducing sea service before an officer first takes independent responsibility risks lowering standards at the very point where sound judgement matters most.”

The Council is calling on regulators and industry stakeholders to reconsider the reduction and to ensure that any final decision is firmly grounded in evidence.

Source: Maritime Professional Council of the UK