With seafarers being very much in the front line of international actions to address the COVID pandemic, it is timely that IMO has made the seafarer the centre of its 2021 World Maritime theme. This theme will be promoted and publicised through a number of initiatives and actions throughout 2021, the first of which is a series of interviews with serving seafarers.

As IMO states in the introduction to the first video, an interview with British Chief Engineer Matt Forster, “this video series will share the insight and experiences faced by seafarers during the pandemic, reflecting a clear need to raise awareness of seafarersʹ vital role in world trade and increase their visibility”. The video can be found on IMO’s YouTube channel and below.

FONASBA strongly supports this message. It, and the link to the video should be shared as widely as possible amongst the maritime community, the press and, perhaps more importantly, with the national authorities responsible for ensuring that seafarers are recognised, firstly as human beings and secondly for the role they play in keeping us all warm, fed and watered. Hopefully seeing some faces, and hearing their stories, may at last convince those in authority to recognise seafarers as essential or key workers and redouble their efforts to allow crew changes to take place easily, quickly and effectively.