Training partnership to help stabilise safety in fishing sector

Developing maritime expertise for fishing vessel safety

SOUTH AFRICA: An initiative to address critical knowledge deficits in the fishing sector has been launched that will fund the development of an accredited course for improving expertise amongst local maritime professionals through the delivery of abbreviated naval architecture training.

The initiative is being undertaken through a partnership between the University of Southampton’s Wolfson Unit, The Seafarers’ Charity (TSC) and the Northeast Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (NEC). They will collaborate with local training provider, Sea Safety Training Group (SSTG) to develop and pilot the course. It has been funded by Lloyd’s Register Foundation as part of its “Engineering a Safer World” funding opportunity.

Work will be carried out to design and deliver a pilot course that includes classroom-based activities, simulations and mock inspections. While the initial project specifically targets South Africa, a feasibility study will investigate whether it could be expanded to more countries in southern Africa.

According to Matteo Scarponi, Principal Research Engineer at the Wolfson Unit, they will take on overall management of the project as well as develop the pilot course, while TSC and the NEC will focus on scaling the initiative through course accreditation and dissemination.

Cape Town based SSTG will be tasked with hosting and administration of the course once it is ready to be deployed.

“We anticipate that the development of course and content will be completed by the end of 2026,” says Scarponi, describing the two-year timeline attached to the project. “We are aiming to launch the training in the first half of 2027 when the pilot will be delivered,” he adds.

Scarponi, who attended the FISH Platform workshop hosted in Cape Town during November 2024, says that the event highlighted the need to mitigate long-term issues around fishing vessel safety relating to the lack of knowledge around vessel stability and design.

“We aim to design an intensive course with a strong emphasis on action learning, which would equip maritime professionals with the knowledge required to conduct simple vessel stability inspections, analysis and reporting tasks.”

“This will help facilitate the stability inspection and certification process, increasing in-service compliance to commercial fishing companies with fleets of vessels,” he says.

He expects the pilot course, which will be delivered over five days, to cater for the free registration of up to 20 selected participants.

As part of the funding provided by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, SSTG will be equipped with a small, model scale fishing vessel for hands-on stability demonstrations in a classroom setting.

They will also benefit from a sitewide licence for the Wolfson Unit’s commercial stability software ‘HST’ which has been used by naval architects worldwide for more than 40 years for stability booklets, compliance checking and stability-related marine accident investigations.

Scarponi confirms that local stakeholders in the boatbuilding and fishing sector as well as other training centres and professional bodies will be targeted to identify potential course participants. While the course is not aimed directly at fishers, he says that training providers will be able to adapt the training they receive to suit skippers and crew.