MARITIME INDUSTRY | Seafarers’ depression tackled in Australia

Booklets on the topic of depression have been distributed on 476 ships since the beginning of the year in Melbourne and other ports in Victoria, Australia. The information has been tailored for the masters of the more than 2,000 merchant ships carrying 60,000 seafarers that berth in these locations.

Written in English, Chinese and Russian the booklets contain telephone numbers masters can call for help regarding a seafarer who may suffering depression.

Ship visitors from the Stella Maris Seafarers’ Centre and the Missions to Seafarers Victoria (Melbourne, Geelong, Hastings and Portland) are distributing the booklets.

Production of leaflets in English, Chinese and Russian for non-officer seafarers is underway with distribution expected to start in August 2010.

A project website was created at http://www.seafarersmentalhealth.org with a new project email address at info@seafarersmentalhbealth.org. The booklets in English, Chinese and Russian can be downloaded through the website.

Source: BAIRD MARITIME

Mystery in the Hormuz: cracks appear in M Star

Cracks have appeared in the hull of the MOL tanker which continues to be the focus of an investigation into a mysterious incident off Oman on Wednesday.

The Japanese owner of the 314,000-dwt M. Star (built 2008) will not back down from its assertion that “an explosion” near the Strait of Hormuz caused a huge dent in the ship’s hull but has denied there was any fire damage.

The Marshall Islands-flagged VLCC remains at anchor at the UAE port of Fujairah as authorities appear baffled at what occurred in the early hours of Wednesday leaving one crew member slightly injured.

Masanori Kobayashi, general manager of MOL’s marine safety division, told TradeWinds on Friday that a dent measuring 14 metres wide and seven metres high is visible above the waterline on the starboard side of the ship.

Kobayashi also said that a number of “small cracks” have developed on the hull due to apparent impact from “an outside cause”. The safety chief insisted, however, that there has been no water ingress or leakage of any of the cargo of cruse oil.

Despite repeatedly referring to the incident as “an explosion”, Kobayashi said there is no evidence of any scorch marks on the hull nor are there any obvious signs of paint marks from another vessel or object. He continued by saying at no time during or after the incident was there a fire onboard the tanker.

MOL was quick to point to an explosion as the result of the incident and has not ruled out an attack or collision. The Japanese owner did, however, tell TradeWinds on Thursday that damage from a freak wave cause by a low-level regional earthquake was “not likely”. A UAE port official has also distanced himself from earlier claims of a freak wave being behind the incident, instead suspecting a collision of some sort.

TradeWinds had earlier been told by MOL spokesperson Kazumi Nakamura that representatives from the US Navy as well as from the UKMTO had boarded the tanker at Fujairah. However, Nakamura on Friday said the company later found out the US Navy had not been onboard.

Reiterating the company’s stance on the probable cause of the incident, Nakamura added on Friday: “Since there are dents on the starboard side hull and damage to the crew quarters area that appear to have been made from the outside, we believe the damage was caused by some external force”.

Amongst other scenarios, the investigation is likely to examine the possibility that the ship was struck by a submarine or a sea mine. An attack by terrorists or Somali pirates has not been ruled out.

By Eoin O’Cinneide in London

Source: Tradewinds

AMSA slams bulker salvage delay

AUSTRALIA’S Maritime Safety Authority has accused the owners of stricken bulker Ocean Emperor of failing to take responsibility for the vessel.

AMSA first issued an intervention order on 24 July when the 74,002dwt Panamax, listed as controlled by Oceanfleet of Greece, was drifting without power about 60 n-miles east southeast of Cairns off the Great Barrier Reef.

After several failed efforts by the vessel to resume its voyage from Townsville to Asia with coal, AMSA’s emergency towing vessel Pacific Responder took it in tow on 27 July and held it about 200km offshore, pending the completion of commercial salvage negotiations.

The authority said today commercial arrangements “have finally been entered into by the owners”, with Ocean Emperor to be brought to an anchorage off Cairns tomorrow morning to undertake engine repairs.

“AMSA was required to intervene to prevent a maritime casualty due to the long delays incurred by the company to take responsibility for its ship,” the authority said. “While AMSA understands that ships do suffer engine failure from time to time, the reticence of the Ocean Emperor’s owners to take responsibility for the situation has been very disappointing.

“AMSA will also be investigating any breaches to maritime law incurred by the Ocean Emperor during this incident,” it added.

Source: Safety at Sea International

This incident reminds me of the Amoco Cadiz disaster: delay to request help, reticence on the part of the owners to salvage the ship, disenfranchising of the shipmaster.

At least we learnt something from it…

RISK MANAGEMENT | The BP Oil Spill and The Power of Negative Thinking

If you want a textbook example of how negative thinking can help prevent errors, look no further than the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As an editorial in New York Times makes clear, “BP’s disjointed response suggested it had given little thought to the possibility of a blowout at 5,000 feet.”

And it’s not just BP that gave little thought to a blowout. The same could be said of many Wall Street firms. They, too, failed to give serious thought to the possibility of a blowout of the U.S. housing market. In testimony earlier this year, for instance, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon made this admission: “In mortgage underwriting,” he said, “somehow, we just missed that home prices don’t go up forever…”

Nobody likes to think negatively (by which I mean thinking seriously and deeply on the front end of a problem about what can go wrong). We prefer to think there will always be blue sky.

But in any serious endeavor, negative thinking is absolutely necessary. Eisenhower thought so. That’s why, when planning the invasion of Normandy, he went so far as to draft a letter taking responsibility for the failure of the D-Day invasion.

More recently, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, testified about the essential importance of negative thinking, which at Goldman takes the form of stress tests.

“…The one thing that we constantly learn from every crisis,” he said. “is the need for more stress tests.”

“What a stress test does is it says, ‘Don’t tell me that this is unlikely. What if it did happen?’

“’But, it’s not going to happen.’”

“’What if it did’”?

What if it did? That’s the key question every negative thinker needs to ask — and it’s one that BP clearly avoided.

But there’s a natural impediment to negative thinking. Researchers call this impediment a confirmation bias. But The Wall Street Journal, in a recent article, referred to it as the “yes-man in your head.” Either way, it amounts to the same thing: when we have a decision to make and set out to gather information, our search isn’t neutral. As the Journal piece points out, we are twice as likely to seek information that confirms our original belief as we are to seek information that contradicts it.

In other words, the more we know, the more certain we become that we are right. And we go on believing that — right up to the blowout.

Source: http://whywemakemistakes.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-negative-thinking.html

SHIPPING | Tomorrow’s world

David Osler | LLOYD’S LIST

Futurology simultaneously fascinates and infuriates, and any attempt to predict how shipping will fare between now and the mid-point of this century must inevitably be a speculative exercise.

But Lloyd’s List is going to make an attempt anyway, based as far as possible on trends that can be observed concretely in the present.

In particular, this article will explore the ‘three Ps’ – population growth, piracy and peak oil – and suggest ways in which the shipping industry of today might best prepare as it becomes the shipping industry of tomorrow.