New guidance prepares shipping for unknown unknowns

LAST week some of the shipping industry’s top organisations announced they had published a new version of the Best Management Practices, a document which provides advice to assess and mitigate global security threats.

In a world where geopolitical risk changes by the day, some of its key authors are firm in the belief this “comprehensive” document equips seafarers with the tools they need to stay safe at sea and keep global trade moving.

The first edition of Best Management Practices was published in 2009 in response to the then growing threat of piracy of the Somali coast.

Oil Companies International Marine Forum maritime security adviser Russell Pegg said the guidance had “sadly” been developed in response to a changing threat environment. He explained that while early editions were focused on the threat of Somali piracy, 2018’s update was already beginning to signpost other concerns on the horizon for shipping.

“In 2018 we’d seen merchant vessels come under duress from unmanned surface vehicles or even missiles or potentially mines,” he said. Other maritime security threats were starting to “bubble up”.

If they were bubbling up in 2018, then they have surely boiled over now. Pegg noted that just opening the newspaper each morning brings with it a seemingly new threat, but there were still some that concerned the industry’s security experts more than others.

International Chamber of Shipping principal director marine John Stawpert said the Red Sea was still high on the list of maritime threats despite a lull in activity compared to 12 months ago.

He said the region was a “target-light” environment for the Houthis at present, as so many vessels continue to divert around the Cape of Good Hope.

“It is still, I think, quite a profound threat to shipping, almost in the abstract at the moment,” he told Lloyd’s List.

“But it’s there, and we’re well aware that depending on geopolitical changes which are well outside the control of the shipping industry, that could be re-manifested very, very quickly”.

BIMCO chief security and safety officer Jakob Larsen said his organisation was also “keeping a close eye” on piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, which has shown signs or re-emerging as a major threat to shipping with the kidnapping of the crew of Bitu River (IMO: 9918133) last month.

Although Larsen said BIMCO was in frequent dialogue with Nigerian authorities and the situation at present was stable, “if it bounces back then, then we will have a real problem on our hands”.

At the other end of the spectrum are the persistent cases of armed robbery in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, which while often classified as minor incidents could still have a major impact on seafarers, Stawpert explained.

He said instances if violence against crew was something the ICS was “really, really keen” to see addressed, because it “only takes one thing to go wrong and somebody could end up being killed” as a result of what many designate as “low-level actions”.

Though a kidnapping in the Gulf of Guinea looks very different to an armed robbery in the Straits of Malacca, the mitigation measures can look very similar, which is why the bodies behind the Best Management Practices believed a unified document, rather than a regionalised approach, was necessary.

Russell Pegg said the mitigation measures for each scenario “are by and large the same because actually what you’re trying to do is stop people getting on board in the first place”.

Stawpert said the “beauty” of the way this latest edition is structured was its flexibility.

“If you’re facing guys armed with parangs coming on board in the hours of dusk or sunrise, you can have mitigation measures in place to deal with that. If there’s a more severe threat of hijack, then again there’s guidance for that,” he said.

Piracy was an issue the industry had “a good handle on” Stawpert said thanks to often “very bitter experience”.

The guidance has been shared with members of organisations such as BIMCO, the ICS and OCIMF, which have had the chance to review and update it with lessons they had learnt from the “salty end of the business”, as Larsen put it.

Missile mitigation

But mitigation against missiles and mines required engagement with the likes of the Joint Maritime Information Centre and UK Maritime Trade Operations, as well as other military bodies.

It’s in those interactions where one major sticking point emerged, Stawpert revealed: whether ships should transit the Red Sea with their Automatic Identification System turned on or off.

He said guidance often “didn’t necessarily follow what you might think with security logic”.

“So, do you go dark, so you can’t be targeted? Or given what we knew about the threat profile in the region and the Houthi’s declared intent, do you make yourself visible, so they know you’re not a target?”

Pegg said the issue was “very controversial, depending on who you were talking to”. “You could put a plausible argument from either end of the telescope on that one,” he said.

Industry guidance differed from military advice Stawpert said, though the issue has “broadly been resolved” for now with many would-be targets now rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope anyway.

There is, of course, the risk that the new Best Management Practices are made obsolete by the latest black swan event.

But while the authors have committed to review and update the guidance periodically, Stawpert said the sheer amount of learning on the job shipping has had to do in the past couple of decades means it is in a position to deal with “whatever the unknown unknown might be that comes over the horizon”, he added.

“Because of those processes, because we’ve got things like BMP and because the security mentality of the industry is so far advanced from what it was at the start of the 2000s, we’re in a position where we can deal with them agilely and rapidly.”

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Lloyd's List Daily Briefing 14 April 2025