At The Nautical Institute London Branch conference on geopolitical maritime risks, I reflected on the fact that shipping has never operated in a stable world. War, political upheaval, piracy and economic disruption are hardly new. What has changed is the way risks now overlap, often reaching a vessel at the same time and leaving the crew to make sense of circumstances that may shift by the hour.

That became increasingly apparent as the day progressed. We heard about war risk, sanctions, naval operations, cyber security, GNSS disruption, shadow fleet activity, abandonment and mental health.

 Ashore, these issues tend to be handled by different specialists. Onboard, they form part of the same operational reality. A master may be receiving revised routeing advice while the bridge team deals with unreliable positioning data and additional reporting. The owner may be speaking to insurers and charterers while family members ask whether the vessel is safe. The crew still has to navigate, maintain the ship and complete the voyage.

One comment that stayed with me was that seafarers can feel forgotten. Public discussion around conflict at sea often concentrates on freight rates, oil prices, insurance premiums and disruption to trade. Those matters are important, but they can make the people onboard seem almost incidental, as though the ship were simply another point moving across a chart.

A vessel does not have to be struck by a missile or drone for its crew to be affected. Spending days or weeks expecting an attack, sleeping badly and trying to reassure families at home takes a toll, even when the ship reaches its destination without physical damage. Seafarers are resilient, but resilience should not be confused with an unlimited ability to absorb fear, fatigue and uncertainty. Nor should support end when the immediate danger has passed. Somebody who has experienced an attack, detention or evacuation may be expected to continue working almost immediately, while colleagues who witnessed a serious injury or death may receive little help because they were not physically harmed.

High-risk voyage planning must therefore involve more than routeing advice and emergency procedures. Crews need an honest understanding of the threats, clear communication from shore and arrangements for keeping families informed. Companies should also know what support will be available afterwards, rather than waiting until somebody is visibly struggling.

The naval contribution offered realism. Naval forces can deter attacks, coordinate shipping and help vessels move through contested waters, but they cannot create a protective bubble around every merchant ship. A warship does not make every passage safe, and naval presence cannot compensate for poor preparation. Naval authorities require accurate vessel information and early notification; owners, managers and masters need to understand what assistance is genuinely available and where its limits lie.   The discussion around the shadow fleet exposed a different failure of protection. Much attention is rightly given to sanctions evasion, ageing ships and opaque ownership, but seafarers may be the first to discover what those arrangements mean in practice. They can join a vessel without knowing that its flag is fraudulent, its insurance unreliable or its ownership hidden behind companies that may disappear when a claim arises. Saying that a seafarer should refuse such a contract assumes access to reliable information and the financial freedom to turn work down.

Cyber threats and GNSS interference bring the argument back to the bridge. A system that stops working is one kind of problem (jamming); a system that continues operating while providing believable but incorrect information (spoofing) is much harder to manage. In those circumstances, the final safeguard is not another screen or alarm, but a bridge team with the training and confidence to question what it is being shown.

By the end of the conference, a clear pattern had emerged. Maritime risk is layered and interconnected. The systems and procedures used to manage it matter, but they are only as strong as the people expected to apply them.

Shipping can reroute a vessel, alter a schedule or arrange additional insurance. It cannot continue allowing unresolved commercial and geopolitical pressures to travel down the chain until they reach the crew.

If the industry wants to become more resilient, it should keep protecting all mariners who serve our sector with professionalism, resilience and dedication.