An Important Reason for Ship Accidents and Detentions: Lack of Training.
More vessels are being detained by port state control (PSC) because of ecdis deficiencies. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has detained eight ships in the first five months of this year for having deficiencies in ecdis set-up and crew competence on the electronic navigation device. This is double the amount as the second half of last year.
In response, AMSA released Marine Notice 8/2016 about the proper operation of ecdis, and advised shipowners that this will be a priority for its inspectors.
Here are a few questions on the ship accidents:
- Why do some shipowners not heed the warnings or learn the lessons of others when it comes to bridge system training and navigation?
- Why are we seeing an increasing number of ships being detained for officers not familiarised with ecdis?
- And why are we still seeing ship’s grounding because of a lack of bridge team training?
- Why seafarers do not receive adequate bridge system and team training?
- Lack of investment by shipowners has led to ship detentions and groundings. But are the warnings being heeded?
A warning has been given by The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA):
More ships are detained ever before because officers are not familiar with the ECDIS equipment they should be working with on board these ships.
Deficiencies have been detected and noted regarding the competence of those responsible for ECDIS operations. They are unable to demonstrate under keel clearance, safety depth and manual position fixing. ECDIS that is badly set up; they do not have the latest electronic navigational charts (ENCs) loaded. The wrong scale of ENCs is used for route planning.
The inspector could detain the vessel due to a lack of skills for important navigation equipment if a crew member that has a training certificate for ECDIS cannot demonstrate such operations.
Thus, it is important for the shipowners to ensure ecdis is set up correctly and that crew has sufficient expertise to demonstrate how to operate these systems properly. The shipowners must consider the navigation safety implications.
A recent report from the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch highlighted how the lack of training resulted in a passenger ship grounding. The report clearly highlighted the factor of lack of knowledge and communication as one of the reasons.
Hence, bridge system and team training are thus vital for safe navigation and ensuring ships are not detained by port state control. So it is a wonder that vessel owners, managers and operators do not put more effort and investment into this – and learn from the lessons of others.
Did you subscribe for our daily newsletter?
It’s Free! Click here to Subscribe!
Source: Issuu
