Seaways Focus - May 2025
Building better together
by Captain John Lloyd FNI, Chief Executive
The Nautical Institute
With our AGM and seminar immediately ahead of us, let me say a huge thank you to the branch team in Dubai for their support and coordination. It is our pleasure to support the work of the Dubai International Seafarers’ Centre by holding our AGM there and hosting a twilight reception after the event itself. My thanks to all those who have registered to attend in person and the hundreds who have signed up to join us on line. Each year technology is helping us stay in touch with a larger audience. Thank you for being part of this very important event.
We are indebted to our sponsors and supporters for demonstrating that together we really can achieve more. This year, our event forms part of SeaTrade’s Middle East Logistics event at the World Trade Centre. This provides the biggest showcase in our history for our sponsors to highlight their contribution to making maritime safer.
I am delighted to be having detailed discussions with The Seafarers’ Charity in relation to our Memorandum of Understanding. We have already achieved a great deal through these arrangements, and will be looking for ways to achieve more together and extend the breadth and scope of our existing arrangements.
"We have to ensure our industry and our mariners are treated with support and respect"
Much of this work focusses on giving people with the right motivation the right skills and opportunities to progress in our industry. But attracting the best and brightest is not always easy. To attract the best, we have to work together, highlight the good of our industry, and ensure our fellow mariners understand both the opportunities and the obligations before them. Most importantly, we have to ensure our industry and our mariners are treated with support and respect. That means support for career development; support to achieve their full potential; support for equal opportunity for all; support when facing difficult times.
Especially, we need to create an environment where mariners will not be exposed to situations of false criminalisation or of abandonment. We must expect authorities and courts in every nation to treat seafarers with the highest principles of natural justice, to ensure that they have fair representation and that they can rely upon legal and pastoral support wherever they are.
Every nation wishes to be respected for its transparency and fairness. Let the true leaders of our industry show the way in ensuring our seafarers are not used as scapegoats for circumstances beyond their control. Doing otherwise fails to address real criminal activity and tarnishes the reputation of those countries seeking an easy solution.
These problems are ones that together we can solve. Not doing so is a lack of will, not a lack of ability.
If we can share good news stories, demonstrate the amazing opportunities that lie ahead in a maritime career both in seagoing appointments and in second careers, then we can be sure of a sustainable and safer future together.