More than 570 vessels struck as shipping faces a crewing crunch

By Tom Whitfield

More than 570 vessels have reportedly been struck in the Black Sea, where attacks killed at least 40 sailors in 2026; at least 24 sailors died in the Strait of Hormuz during the same year.

The global fleet continues to grow. Owners are ordering new vessels in ever-increasing numbers while keeping existing ships trading for longer, extending operational lives rather than replacing them outright. More ships, more sophisticated ships and longer trading lives now meet a shrinking pool of quality people.

The industry has invested billions in hulls, engines, technology, fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and increasingly sophisticated onboard digital systems. Yet the people operating those assets remain the most important resource, and they are becoming harder to find and retain.

Can a growing fleet outrun the people needed to operate it?

BIMCO/ICS workforce projections repeatedly point to a shortage of STCW-qualified officers, with demand expected to keep outstripping supply. The issue extends beyond headcount: the industry needs qualified, experienced and motivated people. Experienced seafarers are leaving in large numbers, sometimes years before the careers for which they trained end.

Maritime consultant Mark O’Neil has spent years calling for a sector-specific public-relations message, known as ‘One Voice,’ to support recruitment. But he treats recruitment as only half the problem, and arguably the less important half. O’Neil writes: “The answer is not simply to recruit more people. It is to retain the people we already have.”

Too many seafarers encounter inadequate human-resource management, limited career planning, insufficient time ashore and little sense of belonging to an organization. They also spend months away from family, carry enormous responsibility and work in technically complex, geopolitically tense and dangerous environments.

Recruitment can widen the funnel, but it cannot by itself repair conditions that make experienced people question whether the rewards justify the sacrifice.

What does conflict change for crew retention?

The Black Sea and Strait of Hormuz toll turns crew risk from an abstract concern into an operating reality. Seafarers now operate through genuine war zones, and the physical danger adds to the demands of long absences, heavy responsibility and complex machinery.

The violence does not make an already demanding career more attractive. For owners, that translates into a harder retention problem: experienced people have more reason to leave, while vessels still need qualified officers.

The question is no longer simply how many people shipping can recruit. It is how many it can keep, and whether owners can protect the people they have already trained and developed.

Why do dedicated crew pools break down?

Among clients in his new role as a maritime consultant, retaining good crew within dedicated pools has become their biggest concern. They spend considerable time and money building those pools, only to see crew move repeatedly onto other owners’ vessels.

Managers sometimes satisfy an urgent requirement by deploying supposedly dedicated crew to another owner’s vessels, especially where immediate matrix or tanker-compliance requirements must be met. The arrangement gives the manager flexibility, but it transfers people without transferring the owner’s investment in them.

No manager currently has the scale and reserves of quality crew to take over management of a large tanker fleet without taking existing crew from other dedicated pools.

What should owners do with a dedicated pool?

O’Neil offers a blunt instruction: “Your crew pool is your crew pool and is sacrosanct.” Owners should treat the pool as their most valuable physical asset, monitoring, nurturing, training and developing it rather than treating it as interchangeable labor.

His practical choice is binary: manage the crew directly, or choose a manager that genuinely practices professional crew management and stay involved. The owner-manager partnership must give the pool individual career paths, training programs, culture, identity and esprit de corps. The crew should feel they belong to the owner, not just to the management company.

That arrangement supports recruitment as well as retention because it gives crew defined career paths, training and a shared identity. It also gives the owner continuity as ships remain in service longer and technology becomes more complex.

What does this change for shipowners and managers?

For shipowners, the commercial consequence is straightforward: a pool built through time, money and training can drain away, leaving fewer experienced people and less institutional knowledge aboard. Loyalty, familiarity, continuity and identity erode as fleet growth and vessel complexity make reliable operation harder.

For managers, moving crew from dedicated pools may solve an immediate coverage problem or spread experience across a fleet. The tradeoff is equally plain: convenience today can weaken owner loyalty and continuity tomorrow.

The next generation of ships will combine steel, composites, software and sophisticated onboard technology. Without the right people aboard, those vessels become very expensive assets sitting idle in the water or trading dangerously and unsafely. As fleet capacity continues to expand and operating demands intensify, qualified, committed crews will determine how much of that capacity can trade safely.