Mark Twain once said, “all you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure”. This is very true in the shipping industry, where we ensure that seafarers confidently demonstrate compliance with the regulatory regimes while being ignorant about many important aspects of these.
The MLC 2006 and STCW 78 (as revised in 2010) regulations pertaining to Work and Rest Hours are something the shipping industry did not want, does not fully support, and is doing little to ensure seafarers can comply with. No one likes to get hurt, suffer loss, or work in a fatigued condition. With MLC 2006 in force, the focus on compliance has increased and ships are often detained for repeated violations of these regulatory requirements.
Know the Law
ISM Code 6.2.1 and 6.4 require that “seafarers are qualified and certificated to national and international requirements” and “have an adequate understanding of relevant rules, regulations, codes and guidelines”—which should ensure seafarers are familiar with hours of work and rest regulations and can apply them in practice. However, this often does not happen, as the regulations are not part of the standard seafarer training syllabus.
While seafarers may know the minimum requirement of 10 hours of rest in any 24-hour period, the practical reality of watch-keeping, port operations, and administrative workload frequently pulls a vessel toward the edge of compliance rather than comfortably within it.
Through consistent training, honest fatigue reporting, and management-level accountability for realistic manning and scheduling—not just paperwork—operators can move from a culture of confident non-compliance to one of genuine, demonstrable rest-hour management.