Safety at sea demands behavioural change

At least one seaman is killed every two days on general cargo vessels globally, highlighting the need for a proactive and practical approach to safety on ships, said Captain Nico Johan Mobach, president and CEO of MCM Maritime Consultants. Based in Germany, Mobach said while much had been achieved in terms of maritime safety worldwide there were still too many incidents costing millions of dollars a day – and the lives lost were irreplaceable. “We can still add up the dollar value of an accident and write it off in terms of profit, but how do we replace the people who are killed? Too many seamen are still dying in accidents at sea that could have been prevented.” Mobach said while traditional safety management procedures and programmes had improved safety dramatically, many of these remained reactive, only taking shape once an accident had happened. “It has been found that up to 96% of marine accidents are caused by human error in some form,” Mobach said the call for behavioural changes on vessels was gaining international ground with more and more seeing the result of having an approach where everyone on the vessel works as a team to bring about safety and security. “This means that if a seaman sees the captain is doing something that is unsafe on the vessel, he or she has the right to point it out. This is not a top down approach to safety but rather a practical and pragmatic way that sees every person on board a vessel concerned about safety and doing their work in such a way that they are always safe.” “The fact is when it comes to safety everyone is responsible. It has to go beyond the safety procedure and be implemented and become the natural and general behaviour of everyone on board all the time. CAPTION Johan Mobach … ‘many accidents are preventable.’