Seafarers Fatigue Study

[Goldie fish]

Study to focus on seafarers' fatigue
Thursday, 16 July 2009 11:21

The European Commission has launched a €4m research project to study the effects of fatigue on seafarers.

Fatigue has become a major issue in the shipping industry and is believed to have been a contributory factor in a number of shipping accidents.

The research will take two-and-a-half years to complete and will study the work and rest patterns of deck and engineer officers, concentrating in particular on watch-keeping, which has become an increasing concern and fatigue has been identified as a major safety issue.
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Because of the particularly onerous job of seafaring, where crews work and rest in their workplace, there are increasing demands from unions and safety organisations that the problems created by fatigue and long duty shifts must be addressed.

The European Maritime Safety Agency reported that 754 vessels were involved in 670 accidents and 82 seafarers lost their lives last year.

Because of the increasing concerns about safety, ship owners, trade unions, marine insurance companies and safety organisations throughout Europe are joining in the research project.
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Story from RTÉ News:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0716/sea.html

[simon]

Well, this has ben an issue for years. As long as companies are allowed to run ships with 2 OOWs (master/mate) and one ER officer on the shrt EU trade, with no mandatory lay ups this will always be an issue.

Everytime you see a small, or even medium coaster go aground, this is normally the case.

There are other factors:

Additionally there is the fact that a lot of people used as cheap crew (outsourced) are underqualified.
Add to this very unscrupulous crewing agencies that are a big problem.

Linguistics are also a problem with sub-standard spoken english among crews.

Unless there are major changes to cabotage laws, stricter regulation of duty hours (ie electronic monitoring) fatigue will be an issue.

Shipowners and managers are not willing to increase the cost associated with proper crewing levels and monitoring, and can afford to loby at EU lvel to ensure the changes required are not made.

[Goldie fish]

In this business, the Radar Audible alarm is a convenient alarm clock.

I worked in such a trade. The skipper slept while the Mate worked cargo, the Engineer slept only when he was drunk.
The A/bs were from Cape Verde. One spoke a little English, but mostly conversed in portugese/creole. One even survived with basic level portugese...

[Goldie fish]

Who?

[golden rivet]

he is a portugese fisherman

[Goldie fish]

To do with topic this is how?

[golden rivet]

they may get tired but they never leave the ship or take part in dangerous work ie armed boarding etc .. how does this survey look upon our own naval service as any service man will tell you on the small vessels we hav not a lot of sleep could be got during rough weather etc

[simon]

they may get tired but they never leave the ship or take part in dangerous work ie armed boarding etc .. how does this survey look upon our own naval service as any service man will tell you on the small vessels we hav not a lot of sleep could be got during rough weather etc

Standby boats do a huge amount of small boat work, launching and recovering in all sorts of weather.

Small coasters, particularly bulk and container after port have insane hours.

Tierdness affects every one at sea, smaller the crew the worse it gets

[spider]

This ship used to be a frequent visitor to the North Coast.

The attached report probably shows the crewing systemm on a coaster well, and the effects of fatique though alcohol was a contributing factor -

http://www.maib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/2005/jackie_moon.cfm