Where will tomorrow’s seafarers come from?

A landmark study warns that nearly half of today’s seafarers plan to quit within five years. As traditional crewing markets age and working conditions drive talent away, shipmanagers are scrambling to build new pipelines. The latest chapter from our new shipmanagement magazine.

The numbers are alarming. A major new survey by the World Maritime University (WMU), published in January and commissioned by the Officers’ Union of International Seamen, drew on responses from 4,372 seafarers of 99 nationalities to paint an alarming picture of a workforce under severe strain – and increasingly minded to walk away.

The report, In Search of a Sea-Life Balance in an Adverse Environment, finds seafarers working an average of 71 hours per week globally, rising to 79 hours for US seafarers. Around one-third of all respondents show stress levels classed as “severe and potentially dangerous.” Work and rest records are being routinely adjusted to mask regulatory breaches. Shore leave is severely limited.

Most troubling for owners and managers is the finding on retention: nearly half of all respondents indicate an intention to quit seafaring within the next five years.

WMU president Maximo Mejia commented: “Prioritising seafarers’ mental wellbeing and healthy working conditions is a necessity, as well as the way to ensure the long-term sustainability of the maritime workforce.”

The WMU called for urgent, evidence-based action to cut administrative burdens, enforce realistic manning and rest standards, and embed human-factors science in regulation – arguing that without this, shipping faces a compounding recruitment and safety crisis.

Africa: the next frontier

Against this backdrop, the question of where the industry will source its future crews is becoming one of shipmanagement’s most strategically important challenges. The demographics of established crewing nations are shifting. Career competition from onshore industries is intensifying. And the working conditions documented by the WMU are making recruitment harder in markets that have historically supplied the bulk of the world’s officers and ratings.

Sebastian von Hardenberg, CEO of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement and president of InterManager, sees Africa as the most significant untapped opportunity. “The declining attractiveness of maritime careers in some established nations makes diversification essential,” he says. “We see strong potential in Africa, where seafarers currently make up only about 3% of the global workforce despite the continent’s vast coastline.” BSM has been active on the continent for over a decade and last year opened its first maritime training centre in Ghana. Beyond Africa, the company’s smartAcademy initiative is building talent pathways through university partnerships in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Georgia and Turkey. “Diversifying our sourcing markets is not only about scale,” von Hardenberg says. “It is about ensuring long-term resilience, competence and quality across our global crew pool.”

Captain Ali Ihtiyaroglu, co-founder of VTS Shipping, also points to East Africa, identifying Tanzania and Kenya in particular as markets where consistent investment in maritime education is bearing fruit. His emphasis, however, is on selectivity rather than volume. “The key criterion is not cost alone but the quality of technical education and adaptability to modern, digitally equipped vessels. Selectivity in crew sourcing matters more than usual right now.”

The value of unfashionable markets

Kuba Szymanski, secretary-general of InterManager, adds nuance to the new market narrative by arguing that established markets should not be written off simply because they have fallen out of fashion. “We are seeing Vietnam emerge as a growing source for seafarers, but our members are also not giving up on traditional crewing markets,” he says. “There are still excellent seafarers in established countries, and sometimes markets fall out of fashion rather than losing quality. Georgia, for example, continues to offer very good seafarers, even if it has not always received the attention it deserves recently.” His overriding criterion remains clear: “The priority must always be quality, training, attitude and long-term career development.”

Building platforms, not just pipelines

For Henrik Jensen, CEO of Danica – one of the industry’s leading crew management agencies – the answer lies in combining physical presence in established hubs with digital capability to reach markets where no office yet exists. Danica has recently expanded into Turkey and Indonesia and operates what Jensen describes as a pioneering cadet programme in Kenya, among the first of its kind in the industry. “Our next phase of growth is focused on strengthening our digital recruitment capabilities,” he says. “This will allow us to reach high-quality seafarers in markets where we do not yet have a physical presence, while maintaining the standards, screening processes and personal engagement that clients expect.” The goal, he adds, is “a scalable, future-ready recruitment platform that combines global reach, local knowledge and robust quality control.”

Vikas Trivedi, co-CEO of shipmanagement at Synergy Marine Group, resists the temptation to label the crewing challenge purely as a geography problem. “Crewing strategy is not a geography question. It is a demographic and developmental one,” he says. “The first priority is to deepen, retain and develop talent in established pools: India, the Philippines and Eastern Europe. The industry must also broaden responsibly into countries where demographics, maritime ambition and training ecosystems are strengthening. The rationale is not low-cost labour. It is long-term pipeline development.”

Crewing strategy is not a geography question. It is a demographic and developmental one

That distinction – between responsible pipeline development and opportunistic cost arbitrage – is one that Niraj Nanda, chief commercial officerat Anglo-Eastern, the world’s largest shipmanager, echoes this comment, saying: “Our priority is not to chase new sourcing regions for their own sake, but to maintain a stable, diverse and competent crewing base,” he says. Anglo-Eastern’s talent pool draws on strong representation from established maritime markets, with diversity viewed as an operational resilience tool as much as a values statement. As the company expands further into the cruise sector, Nanda sees diversity as increasingly central to service quality. “A diverse, multinational team enhances service quality, promotes cultural awareness, improves guest experience and reinforces our broader expertise in crew management.”

Leaking pipelines

Underlying all of these strategies is a harder truth that the WMU report makes impossible to ignore: no amount of geographic diversification or digital recruitment capability will solve a retention crisis rooted in working conditions. The industry can build pipelines in Ghana, Kenya, Vietnam and Georgia – but if the experience of life at sea continues to drive nearly half of serving seafarers toward the exit within five years, the pipeline will always be leaking faster than it can be filled.

The WMU’s call for ships and systems to stop being designed for the seafarer of 1995 is not just a welfare argument. It is, increasingly, a commercial one. Without meaningful reform to hours, rest, shore leave and administrative burden, the crewing question may ultimately have no geographic answer.