A vessel can carry sensors on every pump and still wait on a scanned certificate before its captain steps aboard.

Somewhere ashore a crewing officer is keying the same seafarer’s details into one more system by hand. The fleet went digital years ago. Its people largely did not.

Executives who fund smarter hulls may find their next efficiency gain sitting quietly in the crewing office.

Shipping has spent the past decade wiring its vessels for data. Engines report performance in real time and voyages are optimised from shore. Yet the documents proving a seafarer is qualified to run those vessels still move largely as paper or scanned copies.

The scale makes this hard to ignore. An estimated 2.57 million seafarers serve more than 85,000 merchant ships, according to a report by Thetius and Maritime Passport. Every crew change relies on someone confirming that certificates are genuine, current and held by the right person.

The burden falls hardest on crewing departments. Dorthe Karlsen, Recruitment Director at OSM Thome, which recruits around 6,000 seafarers annually, said entering the details of a captain joining an offshore vessel can take “one to two hours”. Across a fleet, that time adds up quickly. Manual entry also invites errors, and a missing or expired certificate can stall a crew change at short notice.

Regulation has started to move. STCW amendments recognising electronic forms of original certificates took effect on 1 January 2025. The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency began issuing Flag State Endorsements electronically on 1 September 2026.

The harder problem is fragmentation. Turning paper into PDFs changes the format without fixing verification. A useful digital credential must prove who holds it, who issued it and whether it remains valid. It must also be readable across systems, so that shipowners, training providers and flag administrations do not all need the same platform. Without common standards, the industry risks building digital silos that repeat the inefficiencies of paper.

Data protection adds another layer. Owners need sight of qualifications and medical fitness, while the report argues that personal information should be limited to what verification requires.

The business case for ship managers is practical: fewer repeated checks, earlier warning of expiring certificates and reliable records during inspections. Thetius recommends starting with measurable use cases before wider rollout.

Fleets that have already digitised their machinery may discover that crew records are now the weakest link in their digital operations.

Modern vessel operations depend on connectivity for far more than communications. Business-critical applications, remote monitoring, crew welfare and increasingly digital operations all rely on ships remaining connected.

That makes the design of the wider network important.

AST Networks combines LEO and GEO satellite connectivity with cellular and terrestrial technologies, alongside hybrid and Dual-LEO options, to build solutions around individual operational requirements.

Rather than assuming one technology is correct everywhere, the aim is to give operators the flexibility to combine connectivity options as vessel and fleet requirements change.

» Discover AST Networks’ approach to maritime connectivity «

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