Trends and Currents – Professional Mariner

30 Nov

3D tugboat design comes to life

Professional Mariner StaffTrends and Currents

Signet Maritime Corp. has begun construction on the first commercial vessels in the United States developed using a purely 3D design process. The tugboats will be built to the Advanced Rotortug design by Robert Allan Ltd., which places two azimuthing drives forward and one aft. The concept was first developed by Dutch company Kotug, and tugboats outfitted with this propulsion…

04 Oct

Ballast water treatment technology advancing rapidly

Professional Mariner StaffMaritime News, Trends and Currents

Managing ballast water is an indispensable part of maritime operations. How that water is treated before it is discharged will grow in importance as new international rules come into effect. The Ballast Water Management Convention entered into force internationally in September 2017. As of July 2021, 86 countries have signed onto the agreement. Regulations in the United States enforced by…

01 Jun

Cybersecurity 101: Playing it safe when logging in at sea

Professional Mariner StaffCyber Sercurity, Trends and Currentsmariners, maritime industry, United States Maritime Resource Center

Mariners spend less time online than the average landlubber with constant access to Wi-Fi and 5G cell towers, but they often rely on the internet more for managing their lives. Paying bills, shopping or connecting with family and friends during months-long assignments are all done online — using the spotty and often sluggish remote access available to seafaring crews. And…

02 May

Mariner training after COVID: Will online render ‘hands-on’ obsolete?

Professional Mariner StaffLicensing & Training, Trends and CurrentsCOVID, Danica Crewing Services, mariners, maritime news, online training, virtual reality, VR

An emerging trend before the pandemic, online training has now become a major element in maintaining and improving mariner skills almost everywhere — with consequences that so far seem to be mostly positive. Ukraine-based Danica Crewing Services recently conducted a broad survey of mariners that included questions about online training. Fifty-three percent of seafarers said they receive some sort of…

01 Apr

Piloting, still an exclusive maritime club, hones an educational track

Professional Mariner StaffPilot Boat, Trends and Currents

Pilots represent a small fraction of U.S. mariners, but their impact — safely guiding up to 90 percent of goods into the nation’s ports — is immense. While experience remains the most valuable component of pilotage, training has evolved to assume a larger role in developing successful careers. What does it take to become a pilot? The central feature of…

01 Apr

Technology in a backpack: PPUs modernize piloting

Professional Mariner StaffLicensing & Training, Trends and Currents

Development of the portable pilot unit (PPU) in the United States began in 1980 through the efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and Capt. Joseph Bradley of The Pilots’ Association for the Bay and River Delaware. But the electronics of the day and the limits of LORAN-C radio navigation systems…

01 Mar

Rise of new fuels raises questions about adequacy of mariner training

Professional Mariner StaffLicensing & Training, Trends and Currents

New maritime fuels are coming or are already here, and the associated changes are raising concerns about the readiness of today’s mariners. For example, the rise of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is handled in ways dramatically different from fuel oil or diesel, has some concerned that not enough has been done to prepare those who may start to encounter…

22 Dec

Tackling the fishing gear problem

Professional Mariner StaffResearch Vessel, Trends and Currentsentanglement, fishing gear, New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies, whales, WHOI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Beyond collisions with ships, whales inhabiting the waters of North America are vulnerable to injury or death from another human-related threat: fishing gear entanglement. Research conducted by the New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies showed that scars found on 83 percent of endangered North Atlantic right whales and about half of endangered humpbacks between Cape Cod and…

22 Dec

New technology aims to help mariners save the whales

Professional Mariner StaffResearch Vessel, Trends and CurrentsBenioff Ocean Initiative, Santa Barbara Channel, Ship Speed Watch, vessel collision, Whale Safe, whales, whaling

While humans once stood in awe of the size and strength of whales, the roles have been nearly reversed since the mid-20th century as increasing ship traffic has added insult to the injury done by the era of whaling. To reverse the trend, marine scientists, environmental advocates and sympathizers in the nautical community are trying to harness technology to protect…

01 Dec

Advanced props, rudders provide new efficiencies below the waterline

Professional Mariner StaffShipbuilding, Trends and Currentsengineering, propulsion, technology

It took a decade or two from the invention of the marine propeller in the 19th century for the technology to become widely accepted. Thereafter, adoption has been nearly universal, but progress toward improved efficiencies has come in fits and starts. Now, though, a combination of factors — ranging from advances in computer numerical control (CNC) machining and modeling software…