Digitalisation at Sea: Opportunities and Risks
Marine Insurance P&I Club News
n United Nations’ World Day for Safety and Health at Work, this year’s theme – “ensuring a healthy psychosocial working environment” – feels especially relevant at sea.
There is no doubt that better connectivity has brought real benefits. Digital tools help crews do their jobs more safely and efficiently, improving workload management, and providing greater support to seafarers in fulfilling their roles. Improved communications also allow mariners to stay in closer contact with family and friends ashore. Seafarers need that connection, but it also comes with consequences that shipping companies, families, and crews themselves need to understand.
The most recent Mission to Seafarers’ Seafarer Happiness Index has described this tension as the “Connectivity Contradiction.” New technology is widely seen as progress, yet many mariners say it has introduced new emotional and operational challenges. One of the most difficult is the experience of partial contact: being able to see home briefly through a screen, while still being physically absent and unable to help in a practical way.
That can be especially hard when problems arise at home. If there are financial worries, illness, or family stress, seafarers may hear about them immediately but be powerless to do anything while they are carrying out safety-critical responsibilities onboard. In many workplaces ashore, someone who receives a distressing message can step away and deal with it. A seafarer often cannot. Their first duty is to the safe operation of the vessel.
Social media adds another layer to this challenge. While it can help some mariners feel less isolated, it can also intensify homesickness, loneliness, and the sense of missing out. Constant access to phones, smart watches, and entertainment can also create distractions at the wrong moments, weaken safety culture, and increase the risk of confidentiality or security breaches.
So, the answer is not to reject technology, but to use it more deliberately. For families and others ashore, that means thinking carefully about when and how difficult news is shared; recognising that seafarers cannot always respond immediately; and being mindful of what social media may unintentionally communicate to someone far from home.
For shipping companies and crews, it means setting clear expectations around device use, training people properly, and building healthy digital habits onboard. Phones should not interfere with work, and notifications should not compete with safety-critical tasks. At the same time, digital tools should be used where they genuinely support wellbeing, awareness, and safe operations.
The priority, then, should be clear policies, practical training, and smarter use of technology onboard. With this in mind, West P&I’s Loss Prevention team has prioritised simple solutions when it comes to Members using digitalization to enhance risk awareness. For example, training materials and awareness posters can be shown digitally on dedicated screens in recreation spaces and tailored to the ship, the voyage, and the work ahead.
A vessel preparing for enclosed-space entry might display a reminder of the hazards involved. A ship expecting work at height could reinforce the relevant precautions. On a long and demanding voyage, mental health messaging may be more useful. Used well, technology can put the right safety message in front of the right people at the right time.
Ships remain among the most demanding workplaces in the world. Focus is essential, and avoidable digital distraction must be kept under control. But there is no going back from connectivity, nor should there be. The challenge now is to use digitalisation in a way that protects both seafarer wellbeing and the safety of the vessel. Done properly, technology is not a threat to safety culture or to the psychosocial working environment for seafarers. It is one more tool to strengthen it.
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