Ningbo urges Liberia to issue new version of safety circular to its global flagged ships

Category: Governmental News
Published: Monday, 06 April 2020 13:36

Recently, with the active promotion of the Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration, the Liberian Maritime Administration officially issued a new version of its safety circular to its global flag-laden ships. It revised and supplemented reminders to prevent collisions between commercial and fishing vessels in the coastal waters of Zhoushan, Ningbo, and further assisted commercial and fishing vessels to avoid and be effective in a timely communication. 

Liberia, located along the “Belt and Road”, is the second largest flag country in the world, with more than 4,600 ships registered with the Liberian maritime authorities, with a registered gross tonnage of more than 180 million, accounting for about 13% of global merchant ships. The updated content of the Liberia Circular specifically combines the suggestions and needs of local merchants and fishing crews in Ningbo, and has been successfully completed through the "port state-flag state" cooperation mechanism.

"On the coast of Ningbo, I often see many fishing boats sailing with powerful lights, making it difficult to judge the navigation dynamics." This is a doubt raised by a Liberian merchant ship captain. It turned out that this is a special fishing method by which fishing boats shine to the sea through powerful lights to attract the catch, and it is usually a team fishing.

"We don't speak foreign languages. When fishing, we are most afraid that the big ship will come straight, and we don't know how to avoid it." A boss of our city said, "So we can only flash them towards the big ship's bridge to remind them, and then turn the lights on. Pointing in a direction means that there are fishing nets. ”

In response to these issues, in 2019, the Ningbo Maritime Safety Administration carefully collected the suggestions and needs of the ship captains, and combined with the relevant opinions of the Ningbo Coastal Commercial and Fishery Safety Collaboration Dialogue Platform and the Ningbo Coastal Large Merchant Marine Merchants and Fisheries Self-Regulatory Alliance, etc. The cooperation mechanism provided feedback and promoted the new version of the circular to amend and supplement the contents of "fishing boat operation type", "sailing net operation method", "light trapping net operation method", etc., so that international merchant ships can further master the characteristics of coastal fishery-intensive areas in Ningbo Zhoushan and further improve the timeliness of commercial and fishing vessel avoidance and communication effectiveness.  

Since the launch of the “Port State-Flag State” cooperation mechanism by the city's maritime department, it has now promoted Panama, Liberia, Singapore, Cyprus, and other major shipping nations with global influence to issue Ningbo Harbor navigational safety circulars to their registered companies and ships. At present, the mechanism has covered more than 22,000 merchant ships worldwide, accounting for 58% of the global tonnage of merchant ships