Episode 15: Women in shipping - A conversation with Capt. Karen Davis & Margaret Kaigh Doyle by Gard AS

Our guest Dr. Alice Larkin, Professor in Climate Science and Energy Policy at the University of Manchester, sets up the challenge in explaining her work researching "committed emissions" in shipping, that is the GHG emissions to be expected during the lifetime of today's fleet. Her study shows that the carbon budget for shipping will be nearly or completely depleted without immediate emissions reductions. Our guest, Haris Zografakis, a partner with the law firm Stephenson Harwood, explains how shipping can, sector by sector, improve efficiency and reduce emissions by up to 15% and without retrofitting.

in our podcast this International Women’s Day, we listen in on a conversation between our Gard colleague Monica Kohli and Amb. Nancy Karigithu. Monica is a lawyer with the London Defence team and President of WISTA UK. Nancy is a Kenyan maritime lawyer acting as Special Envoy Maritime and Blue Economy and is a candidate for the IMO Secretary General. She shares some sage advice for young people interested in entering the maritime sector.

Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) together with partners, TM Tracking and Global Fishing Watch have developed a tool for the insurance industry to assess the risks that insured fishing vessels and prospects are breaking the rules. Gard is one of the insurance providers testing the tool in the pilot program.

Gard has released the Mariners Medico Guide, a digital, tailor-made, medical guide for assessment and treatment of seafarers aboard ship. We caught up with two special women who spearheaded the project, Gard’s Alice Jackson Amundsen and Dr. Lise Skogstad Loftsgard from the Norwegian Centre for Maritime and Diving Medicine.

US Attorney, David Farrell wrote an intriguing article about the near demise of the US flag international fleet in the Tulane Maritime Law Journal titled “After 100 years: Has the Jones Act Sunk the Jones Act and vice versa?”. We talked about the history of the two prongs of the Jones Act legislation, cabotage and personal injury protection and compared the US closed registry for international ships to the system in Norway. Finally, Dave gives his view on the potential impact of the Jones Act on the current US Administration efforts to quickly ramp up offshore wind energy production.

BIMCO’s Dr Bev Mackenzie provides expertise in marine environmental science, shipping and policy from plastics to climate change. We talk with her about the campaign to reduce single use plastic by replacing plastic water bottles with onboard systems that provide safe and good quality drinking water.

Today we observe International Women’s Day with our On Watch podcast – “See it to be it – improving gender diversity on board.” Our hosts, Kim Jefferies and Kunal Pathak speak with two extraordinary women – Jessie Elizabeth Shifalo and Monica Kohli about their experiences aboard ship and ashore and how mentorship and networking can promote women in seafaring careers as well as shore based maritime industries.

For our third and final podcast in our series about the Trans Carrier nurdle spill, we reached out to SALT, a Norwegian organization that was not involved in the spill and clean-up. SALT is a Norwegian consultancy specializing in marine pollution, marine management and coastal development. We spoke with Brita Staal and Joan Fabres about the scope of nurdle pollution and the effect of nurdle spills on the environment before concluding with a lively exchange of views on potential measures to prevent spills.

In the second in our series on the Trans Carrier nurdle spill, we speak with Thomas Sturgeon, of ITOPF. ITOPF is an international marine pollution consultancy and is Gard’s go to expert for advice in the aftermath of casualties involving pollution of all types. Nurdles are the building blocks for plastic products and are about the size and shape of a lentil. Thomas provides insight into the difficulty of the Trans Carrier clean-up due to the small size of nurdles and the wide disbursement.