As always seafarers are the key element driving the shipping industry and perhaps never more so than today. With politicians and regulators setting much of the industry’s the agenda those working on the ships are doing their utmost to meet the demands of this agenda and this is said to be taking the interest out a career at sea.

At least that was the a general feeling among the 800 or so delegates and the impression given by many of the 30 presenters and panelists who looked at shipping today and what lies in the future, at an Athens forum on 8 October.

Not only was an entire session devoted to seafarers, but it was the first session, following on the heels of a look at the state of the world economy and international trade by former director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy and shipowner Spyros Polemis, the immediate past president of the ICS/ISF.

The high ranking afforded seafaring led panel moderator, Michael Grey of Bimco, to congratulate organisers, the Maria Tsakos Foundation on placing such importance on the seafarers' role in the wellbeing of the industry.

With many innovators and a fair share of regulators in the audience, Grey proceeded to explain his conviction that much of the glamour, adventure and resourcefulness once associated with seafaring has been lost as technology and regulations have not only replaced human endeavour and the joy of sailing around the world, but resulted in complacency, and this is not good for safety nor the environment, nor the economics of the industry.

Fellow panelists, Philip Wake, ceo of The Nautical Institute, and Stratos Papadimitriou, of the University of Piraeus, spoke of the problem of attracting young people to a career in the industry, especially, one at sea, and thus robbing shipping companies of a pool of executives with seagoing experience. They also referred to a shortage in funding for maritime education at a time when technology is making greater demands on training and training facilities.

With Captain Panayiotis Tsakos co-founder of the foundation, now chaired by IMO secretary-general Emeritus, Efthimios Mitropoulos, the importance given by the foundation to seafaring when preparing the industry for the future is not really surprising.

However, for an event which covered the world economy and trade; shipping's image; the state of the markets; shipping finance and the capital markets; the position of Greek shipping within world trade; energy efficiency and its impact on ships; regulations; shipping and the environment; and Greek shipping and the Greek economy as well as seafaring, the importance of the profession kept cropping up.

Greece’s Shipping and Aegean minister, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, while warning government must strive to ensure the shipping industry is not over-taxed or over-regulated, spoke of the need to upgrade marine education through cooperation among all stakeholders to provide the industry with well-trained personnel at sea and ashore.

Indeed, finding personnel and providing the necessary training for them to man ships in the expanding and ever diversifying world fleet is looming as a major headache for shipping in the 21st century.