World Maritime Day 2021

2021 has indeed been a difficult year for seafarers, with endless trials and tribulations from the Covid-19 pandemic forcing them to prove their mettle time and again. However, seafarers have stood the test and continue to perform vital roles in keeping global supply chains moving.

On World Maritime Day, 30 September 2021, the IMO headquarters will be lit blue as part of efforts to highlight seafarers and their core role in shipping and its future. Going forward, the IMO building, including the Seafarer Memorial, will be bathed in blue light on each World Maritime Day as a symbolic initiative to unite the maritime community and raise awareness of the vital contribution of shipping to the world.

Seafarers: at the core of shipping's future

That is the World Maritime Theme for 2021, which seeks to increase the visibility of seafarers by drawing attention to the invaluable role they play now and in the future. At the top of this list that IMO wishes to fight for is crew changes. Where the stresses of seafarers stranded on board ships for months are equally keenly felt by those waiting to join ships to earn a living. With crew change processes being impeded by constantly changing travel restrictions, it has escalated into a humanitarian emergency that threatens the safety of shipping itself.

Throughout the year, the World Maritime Theme will also put the spotlight on other issues related to the human element of shipping, including the safety and security of life on board ships, seafarers' well-being, and the importance of ensuring an appropriately trained and qualified workforce, ready to meet the challenges and opportunities of digitalization and automation.

Likewise Standard Club will ramp up our efforts in speaking up for seafarers and doing our part to improve seafarer wellbeing.

Most recently, Standard Club became a signatory to the Global Maritime Forum’s 2021 Neptune Declaration on Seafarer Wellbeing and Crew Change – which focuses on overcoming the current seafarer crisis, enabling crew changes, and repatriation.

This year we became a proud sponsor of Mission to Seafarer’s Seafarers Happiness Index which is a survey consisting of 10 questions, conducted industry wide on a quarterly basis. It aims to get the opinion of the overall seafaring community in terms of their thoughts and feelings on a wide range of issues from mental health, physical wellbeing, general working life and family contact.

We are also happy to be working together with Sailors’ Society on their Wellness at Sea programme – where we will be sharing useful resources from short readings, videos, podcasts on a variety of wellbeing topics – over a course of 27 weeks. These web alerts will be uploaded every Monday and alternate Fridays until December 2021.

Over this pandemic, we have conducted webinars with major welfare organisations such as ISWAN, Mission to Seafarers, and Stella Maris to address concerns that seafarers may have and point them to resources that they may require.

Last year we released a Seafarer Wellbeing Poster Campaign comprising of four pairs of posters touching on the topics: healthy diet and lifestyle, mental wellbeing, fitness and exercise, socialisation. We are happy to share that this project won the 2020 Safety4Sea Initiative Award and have been featured in international trade magazines such as Offing Echoes and The Sea.

In 2018, we released a special edition publication on Standard Safety: Seafarer Wellbeing where we worked extensively with industry experts and doctors to give tailored advice and pinned statistics from crew claims to develop this as a resource for seafarers.

All these resources serve to remind you that you are never alone. International organisations and governments are doing all that they can to include you in the international response. Should you need someone to talk to, dial in to one of these 24/7 helplines. 

Category: Loss Prevention