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Monday, July 28, 2025

Some Things Have Remained the Same

Maritime Activity Reports, Inc.

May 29, 2025

Source: Maritime Reporter TV

Source: Maritime Reporter TV

President of New Wave Media, Greg Trauthwein, spoke to Knut Ørbeck Nilssen, CEO Maritime, DNV, for the latest episode of Maritime Reporter TV.

Asked about what has remained the same over his 30+ year maritime career, Nilssen said: “If I look to the maritime industry, it has really maintained a fairly stable regulatory environment over all these 30 plus years. We still have the IMO, as a global regulator, which is quite rare for any industry.

“We still have flag states, port states and not least, classification societies, and these are all very stable regulatory entities that keep us a very international industry. And this consistency has allowed the industry to really focus on innovation, continuous improvement, and not be too much ‘drowned’ in regulatory or national requirements that might hinder progress on an overall scale.

“Another one is that it's still very much a people's business. We have different tools, but we are still very much relating to each as individuals, as people, and not least the seafarers. They remain, to a very large degree, at the core of safe operations back in the, say, early 90s and today. It's still the seafarers that are really carrying the biggest burden for making sure that operations are safe and that we are delivering goods to support worldwide trade. And I guess we saw that during COVID, how sensitive everything was to all the difficulties that the seafarers endured during the pandemic.

“And then I would say, as a third point, we have lots of technology, but we still need to focus on some of the basic safety issues like collisions, groundings, seamanship and mechanical failures. These are all things that remain the same, maybe the environment or the tools that we have are different, but it's very much similar things.”

To find out what Nilssen sees as the biggest changes that have occurred over this time, tune in to Maritime Reporter TV here.

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