SEAFARERS MAKE THE WORLD WORK AND THEY DESERVE OUR SUPPORT
Without shipping, life would be different. We would have limited access to a lot of the food we consume, pharmaceuticals, clothes and consumer goods, as around 90 percent of world trade is transported by ship.
Look around you. Your phone, your computer, your cup of coffee: 90% of everything you use comes by sea, transported by an often-invisible workforce of 1.7 million seafarers.
Because of them, and the over 61,000 ships we are served by, we do not run out of what we need.
Without them, we would miss most of the things we rely on every day. To bring those things to us, seafarers in turn miss many of the things we take for granted.
Life at sea can be rewarding and fulfilling, but it’s not without its challenges.
Seafarers leave their homes and loved ones to go to sea for up to a year at a time, facing extreme loneliness, violent storms, the threat of piracy and even hijacking by terrorists.
Many of these men and women come from the world’s poorest communities, with limited career options.
Imagine leaving your loved ones, boarding a ship (for what you thought was a specified time) and now, not knowing when you will be able to return.
This is the plight of thousands of seafarers the world over, who are working on ships so that you can get everything you need – food, medicines, supplies, provisions, etc.
BIMCO has launched an initiative to raise awareness about the crucial role of shipping and its seafarers. Help raise awareness outside the shipping industry by sharing the films below:
“With the crew change crisis intensifying day by day, it has become clear that one of the primary reasons for this crisis, is lack of awareness when it comes to shipping,” BIMCO’s Secretary General and CEO, David Loosley says.
“Now is a good time to make decision-makers and the public aware of how medicine, food, cars and clothes are transported, and why seafarers too should have key worker status,” Loosley says.
We were on a super tanker for 7 months instead of 4 months and thees ships because they are to big and can’t go into any port .their is a special buoy far out to sea to load or unload and it takes about 36 hour to unload or load.it takes a month sailing and back everytime so the crew went bezerk and assaulted the first officer and captain thats the time we come past cape Town the crews home port so we were promised the return trip we will change crew that took another six weeks one crew member wanted strike a lighter at one of the gas rizors but was stopped in time .otherwise that would have blown up with everyone on board. That was in 1975.