A culture of security practice onboard the average cargo vessel is a relatively new part of a life-at-sea' whilst onboard an all-singing all-dancing passenger ship it has been part of the culture since the keel was first laid! On oil and gas tankers it has been thought about on dredgers a mere passing joke!
Security awareness sprung out of the woodwork with a vengeance after the bombing of the twin towers in New York (9th November 2001) but was the culmination of a series of events before and after that came to a head with the USS Cole being targeted in Yemen (12 October 2000) and the final nail in the coffin being the MV Limburg in the Arabian Sea in October 2002.
Both the USS Cole and the Limburg highlighted the glaring openness of vessels and ships to terrorist attack or of them being used to promote terrorist activity. With America pushing wholeheartedly at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) a new amendment was adopted in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) 1974 to enhance the security of ships and port facilities the world over. The end result was a resolution designed to deter terrorists from being able to use ships in their planning or if they did plan to use a vessel that the new security measures in place would prevent them from finishing the job!
Well, enough background! What in effect the world community has today is a whole lot of package that all signatory and contracting governments have signed up to, something that has basically changed life-at-sea' for most seafarers forever! Most seafarers would agree that the change has not been for the better!
In effect the new laws state that all port facilities, merchant cargo vessels over 500grt, vessels engaged on international voyages and all passenger carrying vessels and their companies are now responsible for onboard security at all times! This security' covers everything from the constantly suggested and alarming terrorist attack, piracy and bomb threats to the simpler and more common categories of unauthorised access, stowaways, theft, vandalism and organisations that like to shock, e.g. Greenpeace. The new laws put in place systems and procedures to enhance this regime through greater co-operation between the contracting governments, to establish roles and responsibilities of all parties and persons involved, to exchange security related information in an efficient manner and to provide confidence that sufficient security measures are in place.
At the very blunt end of all this law-making, procedural paper compilation and job-creation is the vessel, the same old lump of steel that plied the seas for twenty years without hiccup and that must now comply to these rules without argument or question and to do this without extra crew or idea as to why' they were okay before and not now!
To backtrack a little: the USS Cole was a military vessel which is exempt from ISPS rules anyway, the Limburg was a tanker in the Arabian Sea in what was basically a war zone and the twin towers were large land-based structures attacked by airplanes! Common sense has somewhere been mislaid and forgotten about during the creation of the ISPS code! A little general cargo vessel plying a trade between Leith Docks in Edinburgh, Scotland to Stavanger in Norway has about as much chance of being boarded by terrorists or visited by a suicide bomber as they have of sailing to the moon! A large American flagged passenger ship visiting Beirut might possibly be mentioned over a cup of Glenmorangie at the local terrorist cave!
The basis behind the ISPS code is to provide a structure through which individual vessels become secure enterprises. The two main actions on the part of the crew to achieve this are to lock down their vessels using a variety of padlocks and keypads, to secure the accommodation and to increase vigilance and awareness by providing airport style security checks to all and sundry who visit or depart the vessel! These security measures include 24hr gangway watches whilst in port, identification checks to all who visit and bag and body searches as and when deemed necessary!
There are many failings with the ISPS code structure and its current implementation! No extra crew suddenly arrived onboard the ships to fulfil this new security-based work and for the most part the ports (the other participative half of the code) have failed to enter into the agreement with the same enforced gusto that the vessels had to! The Port of Felixstowe in the UK might be one of the most secure ports in the world with cameras glued to every lamppost and mean looking security guards treating everybody with undue suspicion but over in the Port of Marseilles there are no cameras and the lone security guard reads porn to pass the time!
America, with the US Coast guard leading the way has pushed ISPS through alongside its own rules and regulations, they have created paperwork and officialdom that has gone allot further than the code itself! America has been the leading International voice behind ISPS yet back home' glaring loopholes exist! I recently had cause to travel to the States and to the Port of Houston, Texas to visit a vessel. I travelled initially to Miami where I was subjected a couple of hours of typical American enforced bonhomie, snaking queues and guilty' style questions at security checks! I then managed to get on the domestic flight to Houston from where I was whisked away to my hotel. From there onward and for the next two weeks my passport was never once checked, I was never subjected to a security check or control point, despite the fact that I entered port facilities on numerous occasions, that I went ashore from the vessel and got drunk, that I returned to the vessel by boat instead of by road and that the vessel was berthed next to a military vessel and in a military port with tanks, armoured cars and weapons on the same berth! I could have also departed with the vessel when she sailed to Venezuela without US immigration having a whiff as to my departure!
The ISPS code has ably proved that the ships are once again at the blunt end of the food chain, they have no Unions, no voice to speak for them and certainly no understanding from those ashore. Equally so, ISPS has re-empowered many ashore to fulfil positions of authority, it has created jobs for thousands of paper-pushers, training establishments and governments officials who board vessels with clipboard and arrogant attitudes and it has created another misery for those at sea!
Admittedly Rome was not built in a day' and that it makes sense in this day and age to be more aware and to treat security as a matter of daily life! The ISPS code may therefore have base merit! It must though be applied with common sense, based upon area of work and the type of vessel under consideration, it must be remembered that seafarers were never designed to become security guards (why go to sea in the first place) and that if the vessels are to be "accused of failing to comply" then so should the 99% of port facilities that have no security in place at all!
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A Typical Spanish Port where no security exists and probably never will!
The Unsecured and Unsafe Access point on the Mississipi
