Currents………

Currents…….

MEDICAL COSTS: The Maritime & Coastguard Agency’s decision to phase in proposed increases in the fees for seafarer medical examinations has been welcomed by many. The MCA had suggested the ENG1 fee should rise from £80 to £85, but said there was ‘ample evidence’ to show that this would not make it economically worthwhile for doctors to continue providing the service. However, in response to concerns raised by the Union, it has agreed to phase in the increases over three years, taking the fee up to £115 in 2019.

CANADIAN WIN: the Seafarers’ International Union of Canada (SIU) has claimed victory in a long running campaign over the government’s decision to issue work permits to foreign seafarers on foreign flagged ships in Canadian waters. In July last year, Canada admitted that it improperly issued the work permits and the union has now secured agreement from the government to review the future issue of work permits to foreign seafarers, including a requirement that open positions be first advertised to Canadian seafarers, and that foreign seafarers be paid the prevailing wage.

CRUISE COMPENSATION: the owner of a cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Canada seven years ago is to pay compensation of C$445,361 (US$339,000) after a court ruled that the owners were responsible for the accident. The 4,400gt Clipper Adventurer had hit an uncharted rock shelf in Nunavut in August 2010, but the court dismissed a $13.5m claim from the company, alleging that the Canadian government failed to provide information that could have prevented the grounding.

EMISSIONS VOTE: ship owner groups have criticised a European Parliament vote to propose the inclusion of international shipping in the EU’s emissions trading system. The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), which represents more than 80% of the world merchant fleet, said it was ‘disappointed but not surprised’ by the decision, but warned that it ignored ‘the real progress that has already been made by the International Maritime Organisation’.

BREXIT MEETING: talks about the potential opportunities for British shipping arising from the UK’s Brexit vote took place with Treasury minister Jane Ellison last month. A delegation from Maritime UK discussed issues including ways to increase the number of UK seafarers being trained and announced a study into the economic impact of tonnage tax to the national economy.

TUC WARNING: billions of pounds are being lost to the UK economy each year because of poorly paid and insecure jobs, a new TUC report has warned. The study says that more than £75m is lost every week as a result of ‘low-paid self-employment’ and ‘shady contracts’ and it estimates that insecure working now accounts for one in every 10 British workers.

FATAL BLAST: the Marine Accident Investigation Branch is looking into an incident in which a seafarer was killed and another injured by an explosion on-board the K Line containership Manhattan Bridge in the UK port of Felixstowe. The explosion occurred in the boiler room of the 13,870TEU vessel as it arrived after sailing from the port of Rotterdam.

PRINCESS ORDER: Princess Cruises has ordered a sixth ‘Royal’ class vessel from the Italian builder Fincantieri, due for delivery in 2022.

SUBSEA CALL: investment in new technology and increased collaboration is essential if untapped smaller fields in the North Sea are to be opened up, a conference heard last month. Delegates at the National Subsea Research Initiative workshop in Aberdeen were told that new initiatives are needed to exploit remaining reserves in the area, which have often been deemed as uneconomic.

US CURBS: US maritime unions have welcomed proposals to strengthen the country’s Jones Act requirements to cover vessels carrying oil and gas equipment in US waters. They claim the extension of the rules to require the use of US-flagged and US-crewed construction vessels to transport equipment could ‘rightfully restore over 3,200 American jobs’.

BRENT BOOST: industry experts have welcomed the start of consultations on Shell’s plans to decommission its Brent oil and gas field, predicting that the work could create hundreds of new jobs.

SHIP BANNED: the Russian-owned general cargoship Sormovskiy 54 has been banned from ports and anchorages in the Paris MOU port state control region after being detained for the third time in 18 months. The Palau-flagged ship is subject to a threemonth refusal of access order from the 27 member states in the MOU.

INDIAN SPILL: an investigation has been launched in India following an oil spill caused by a collision between the Isle of Man-flagged LPG carrier BW Maple and the Indian-flagged product tanker Dawn Kanchipuram. An estimated 40 tonnes of fuel oil was spilled in the incident, which occurred near the port of Kamarajar.

EMERGENCY TOW: the French emergency towing vessel Abeille Languedoc was called out to tow a Dutchflagged general cargoship to safety after it suffered a blackout in the Channel last month. The 4,106gt CFL Patron, which was carrying a cargo of steel, was towed to the port of Dunkirk for repairs to be carried out.

PONANT PROBE: authorities in New Zealand have launched investigations into two incidents involving the French cruiseship L’Austral. The 10,700gt vessel, owned by the Ponant company, was reported to have struck a rock in Milford Sound and made contact with a submerged object near Stewart Island.

GERMAN CALL: German shipbuilders have called for their government to do more to help them compete against Asian yards. They have urged ministers to beef up German maritime policy in recognition of the ‘outstanding strategic importance’ of the sector and to retaliate against protectionism.

CROATIAN LINK: the Italian operator Snav is set to re-open cruise ferry services to Croatia, running a daily link between Ancona and Spalato, with weekly calls to the island of Hvar from 5 April to 7 October with a possible extension for autumn sailings.

CALAIS CUTS: authorities in the French port Boulogne-Calais report a ‘particularly difficult’ 2016, with a 6.8% reduction in passenger loads over the year. They blamed the downturn on the UK Brexit referendum and the fall of sterling against the euro.

STOWAWAY FOUND: the Brittany Ferries vessel Barfleur was forced to return to port after a stowaway was discovered during security check of the vehicle deck on a voyage between Cherbourg and Poole last month.

GAS TERMINAL: the Dutch firm Gasunie is planning to construct a new coastal LNG gas terminal near the port of Hamburg. The facility will include a dedicated jetty for marine bunkering.

CORSICAN BOOST: the ferry firm Corsica Linea has recruited nine more officers after reporting a growth in traff fic during its first full year of operations between Corsica and the French mainland.

FINE APPEAL: A Greek shipping company has lodged an appeal against a €1m fine imposed by a French court for pollution off the coast of Brittany last February. Laskardis Shipping denies responsibility for deliberately causing a 43km-long slick that was traced to one of its ships, the 75,039dwt bulk carrier Thisseas. The company is also appealing against a €30,000 fine that was imposed on the ship’s Ukrainian master, who is believed to have committed suicide after the vessel was spotted by a French surveillance aircraft.

PENALTY RECORD: the US Department of Justice says 2016 was record year for prosecuting shipping companies and crew for illegal discharges from ocean-going vessels in US waters. At the end of the financial year, the department’s environmental and natural resources division had imposed criminal penalties of more than $363m in fines and more than 32 years of imprisonment from cases related to intentional discharges of pollutants from vessels.

SCRAPPING SOARS: containership scrapping could hit a record 750,000TEU of capacity in 2017, according to the market analyst Alphaliner. It said that 42,000TEU had been removed in the first three weeks of the year and 113,000TEU of ships were due to be sent for scrap in the coming weeks, putting the sector on schedule beat the record 655,000TEU of capacity scrapped in 2016.

FEWER SPILLS: oil spills from shipping have continued a ‘dramatic’ long-term trend of decline, the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation reports. Its annual report reveals that spills totalled 6,000 tonnes last year, a 14% fall from 2015, and that there has been a 90% reduction in the number of major oil spills and a hundred-fold reduction in the volume of oil spilt since the 1970s.

KOREAN AID: South Korea’s government is spending the equivalent of US$515m to support the containership operator Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) under a special state aid scheme to rescue troubled shipping and shipbuilding firms. The scheme will see the government buy HMM vessels and lease them back to the company at favourable charter rates.

LEAVE ROW: French union Fomm-CGT has criticised V.Ships France for seeking to reduce onshore leave to five days between voyages for officers serving on oil and gas tankers in the Geogas fleet. V.Ships says it is working to bring more ships into the French register, but ‘suffers from a lack of competitiveness’ on costs.

MASTER SENTENCED: the master of the Cyprus-flagged chemical tanker Peterpaul has received an eight-month suspended prison sentence for failing to stop after a collision with the fishing vessel Rupella off the French Atlantic coast in November 2014.

BRITTANY BUILD: French unions have called for a new LNG-powered vessel for the Brittany Ferries fleet to be built at the STX yard in St Nazaire, France, instead of Germany.

Online access is top need while in port

The ability to get online while in port has become increasingly important to seafarers as opportunities to get ashore decline, new research has revealed.

A recent study found that 90% of seafarers now consider internet access to be the most important port-based service, up from 68% a decade ago.

Internet access has overtaken transport to shops and town, transport to seafarers’ centres, international phone calls, port-based medical clinics and money exchange facilities in the top six most popular welfare services.

The study —which gathered feedback from almost 1,000 seafarers, found that almost three-quarters had only limited or no email access on-board and only 26% had unrestricted access.

Asked how many times they had been able to take shore leave in the previous four weeks, 30% reported none, 35% reported once and 20% twice. Almost two-thirds blamed work on-board as the main reason for failing to get shore leave, followed by 41% citing fast turnaround times and 33% not having enough money. Almost one-third said their ships were usually in port for less than six hours and two thirds reported turn round times of 24 hours or less.

The report notes that seafarers remain dissatisfied with their internet access despite ‘a steady improvement’ in the provision of services over the past decade. While 45% of seafarers rated port-based internet services as good or excellent, the survey found that none of 13 different port based welfare services, including chaplaincy, transport, money exchange, phones, and book and film exchange, scored a favourable rating of 50% or more.

(With thanks to the Nautilus Telegraph:  https://www.nautilusint.org)