Masatsugu Kimura, Institute for Sea Training, Japan
ABSTRACT
The changes in the shipping industry in the last 40 years are the same
or more drastic than those in the last 200 years, such as enlargement of ship size,
automation, containerization, satellite information, communication, etc. The purpose of
these technical innovations and developments is to carry more cargoes and passengers
quicker and to reduce the crew.
MET institutes all over the world have been affected very strongly when
trying to catch up with these technical and operational changes.
Now the shipping industry has noticed the drying up of experienced
seafarers and a shortage of the total number of seafarers from both developed and
developing countries.
This paper discusses the future plans for bringing up good, qualified
seafarers through contributions from WMU and Japan to MET in Asia.
The Education of the Mercantile Marine (EMM) is one of the border less
fields such as the education of medicine, language and science. But one significant
difference between the EMM and these three fields is that the EMM cannot exist
independently in a single country and the EMM is strongly linked with the developments or
changes of the shipping industry. Therefore, the EMM is reformed at the same time in
hundred countries.
The STCW 95 and the ISM Codes as SOLAS 74 Chapter IX come into effect
in February and June 1997 respectively. These two IMO regulations will directly
