The Challenge of a Stowaway

The International Maritime Organization's (IMO) FAL Convention is a critical global treaty dedicated to maximizing shipping efficiency and reducing port "red tape" by standardizing and digitalizing maritime documentation, most notably through the mandatory Maritime Single Window (MSW). Beyond streamlining routine customs and immigration procedures, the convention serves as the definitive international legal framework for managing stowaway incidents. It officially defines a stowaway, mandates humane treatment and essential welfare provisions, and establishes the shared legal and logistical obligations between shipmasters, owners, and port states to ensure timely identification, digital reporting, and cooperative repatriation, thereby actively preventing vessels from being delayed by indefinite custody disputes.

In this episode Barry shares his own experience of Stowaway cases and discusses who pays, notifications and the challenges of finding a stowaway onboard the ship.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back everyone to the Maritime Education Podcast. My name is Barry Sadler, and if you were a regular listener, thank you very much, and once again a welcome back. If you're a new listener and hopefully a new subscriber to our podcast, I hope you do find something in the podcasts that both entertains and educates you. The Maritime Education Podcast isn't just here to be informative, it's here to try and give you an insight into the maritime world and talk about things that perhaps don't make mainstream media don't normally get discussed within the news. Today I'd like to talk about stowaways, but before I do, let me tell you a bit of a story from when I was a cadet some forty years ago. My first trip at sea was on a container ship. A container ship called the Ben Avon. By today's standards, she was a relatively small container ship with just 3,032 20 foot equivalent units on board. Although she was three hundred meters long, she was very, very thin and very very fast. When you think about modern container ships these days at 300 meters being capable of carrying over 9,000 twenty foot equivalent units, you realise how small and sleek she was. I joined the ship in Southampton and we initially went on to the European coast before returning to Southampton prior to our voyage out to the Far East. The voyage out to the Far East left Southampton, went down through the Mediterranean, down through the Suez Canal, and our first foreign port of call after Southampton was Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. We stopped here and worked cargo for a day, after that went on our merry way across the Indian Ocean towards the far east. Every day it was the cadet's job, particularly when in the Indian Ocean, to check the hold temperatures. We didn't just check the whole temperatures, we used to take a whirling psychometer with us. This is basically a wet and dry bulb thermometer within a whirling device that you would stand inside the entrance to the hold, whirl the wet and dry thermometer around, read the dry bulb, read the wet bulb, and report back to the chief officer not just the temperature of the hold but the relative humidity of the hold so this could be managed properly. In order to access the holds to get these hold temperatures, you have to descend down through the accommodation, through the engine room and into what was known as the underdeck alleyways. Underdeck alleyways are still there on modern container vessels. There are an alleyway that's just below the main deck that's used for traversing the entire length of the ship and in particular accessing things like the holds but also accessing things like pilot doors. Ultra-large container vessels have a door down low in the hull, which you can open and rig a pilot ladder through. When you do board as a pilot, you climb out of this shell door space and into the underdeck alleyway. You then walk down the underdeck alleyway to the engine room, hopefully to the elevator and up to the bridge. Forty something years ago as a first trip cadet, I was down with the senior cadet in the underdeck alleyway, going from hold to hold, recording the hold temperatures. We used to do this, as I say, every single day. And so we knew the hold temperatures, we knew the hold access points, we knew the underdeck alleyway very, very well. As we went from section to section through each watertight door, we knew exactly where to look in order to take these temperatures. Doing it every day, we were very, very familiar with the condition of the spaces that we were traversing through, and on this one morning the senior cadet and I went through a watertight door into a space that was completely blacked out. No lights whatsoever in this space, which wasn't the case the day before. Now, this didn't bother us too much. Um both of us had uh had torches on us, and we switched on our torches and uh went to the hold door in order to take the whole temperatures. Just before we got to the hold door, something caught our attention at the end of the underdeck alleyway. It was dark up there, the torches were fairly small, but we could see something moving in the underdeck alleyway. Both of us froze. We didn't know what this was. We'd been down there the day before and the lights were working, and there was nothing else down there for the whole length of the ship. But all of a sudden something was moving. We assumed it was another member of the crew who was trying to spook us as we walked down through the underdeck alleyway, but as we shone the torches towards the corner of the alleyway, we could see that this was not a crew member. It was a very frightening episode because all we could see and hear was somebody obviously very, very stressed, very, very frightened, breathing very, very heavily. They were dark skinned, so all we could see with the torches in the corner of the alleyway was the whites of their eyes and the whites of their teeth. This person that we had discovered was of course a stowaway who had managed to get on board the ship in Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah. This being 1985, there was no ISPS code. Um we seem to remember as a cadet, I seem to remember the gangway being manned sporadically by one of the uh on deck sailors, but there was no formal s security procedures to follow and no formal checks prior to departure. In other words, very easy for somebody to get themselves on board the ship and squirrel themselves away. This stirway had made himself a home really in the underdeck alleyway. Um he'd done this in a very short space of time. He'd obviously been to and from the accommodation, taking stores, he'd made himself uh a little bunk in the corner, and assumed, I think, that nobody would ever come down that neck of the woods at all. Uh so was probably quite surprised to see us taking hold temperatures on the first day out of Jeddah. He was very, very passive, this stowaway. As I said earlier on, he was incredibly scared, incredibly worried that he had been discovered. He was an African national and had obviously looked to make his way to the Far East in order to either start a new life out there or try and work his way further around the globe by stowing away on ships. Back to the time of discovery, the senior cadet and I didn't want to engage this guy. He was bigger than both of us, and although you could tell he was worried and scared, breathing very, very heavily and shying away into the corner, we weren't going to take any chances. We ran up, found the chief mate, dragged him down there, we recovered the stowaway, and uh the stowaway was given a cabin and we proceeded on passage. We just kept going to the far east. The stowaway was eventually discharged in Malaysia at a port called Port Calang. Um he stayed on board the ship for the whole passage across the Indian Ocean. We didn't divert to uh to discharge him, he uh he came with us the whole way. As a young cadet and a 16-year-old, I wasn't aware of any issues of discharging that stowaway in Malaysia, but once the authorities had been informed, they came on board the ship and collected him and took him away. So, although this is some forty-one years ago, I don't remember anybody discussing on the bridge or around the ship that there was an issue getting rid of this stowaway. So, stowaways. What is a stowaway and how do we define a stowaway? Now the IMO has of course uh something called the Fowle Convention. Fowle Convention is uh a fairly old convention at the uh at the IMO. It's the Convention on the Facilitation of International Maritime Traffic and was adopted by the IMO way way back in 1965. Now the Fowle Convention is entirely focused on efficiency and trying to remove some of the bureaucracy surrounding reporting into ports when you arrive. In other words, what Fowle looks to do is to standardize ship reporting to the various IMO member states so that the captain isn't faced with dozens and dozens of different forms to fill in whenever he announces his arrival at the next port of call. What the FAL does is it standardizes this reporting. It's gone a little bit further with a single reporting point known as the maritime single window and recent digitalization of the maritime single window. We'll discuss that a little bit later on. So the FAL Convention itself actually defines what a stowaway is, and let me quote from the FAL Convention. A stowaway is a person who is secreted on a ship or in cargo which is subsequently loaded on the ship without the consent of the ship owner or the master or any other responsible person, and who is detected on board the ship after it has departed from a port or in the cargo while unloading it in the port of arrival and is reported as a stowaway by the master to the appropriate authorities. So the stowaways are very, very clearly defined. In other words, we can't pass a stowaway off as some other person on board the ship who may be there for a reason, for instance. In other words, we can't claim that a crew member is a stowaway and have the port state pay for their repatriation, or indeed the P and I Club contribute towards their uh their repatriation. A stowaway is given that very um definitive description. So the individual must have hidden themselves uh away on the vessel. Okay? They can't be in full sight of everybody. They must have secreted themselves away, such as the guy that we found in the underdeck alleyway. They must be on board in a completely unauthorized presence. They do not have the permission of the master, the ship owner, the crew, the port, or anybody else to be on the ship. This lack of consent is very, very important. Now, the timing of the discovery is is a crucial legal distinction when we talk about stairways. If a person is sneaks on board the ship and is caught before the ship leaves the port, then they can be treated more like a trespasser by local police when you are when you report them. Um in these modern day and age, with the ISPS code, they would be an intruder, they may even be treated as somebody who may have attempted to uh breach the security for some form of terrorist activity or trying to prevent the ship from sailing. To meet the legal definition of a stirway, they must be discovered after the ship has departed port, or of course while the cargo is being unloaded in an export call. In the case of our man in the underdeck alleyway, he was discovered the day after departure from uh from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea, um, having secreted himself in that underdeck alleyway and um hiding away from everybody. He had stolen goods from the ship as well, which of course is something that stowaways are forced to do in order to try and survive without being detected. He chose a poor place to try and hide, not realizing that, of course, uh a couple of young cadets would be down there every single day to check the hold temperatures and were very, very likely to uh to discover him down there. Definition of stowaway, however, is still not fulfilled and is only fulfilled once the master reports the individual's presence on board the ship to the appropriate authorities. So the master must report this and may do so using the Foul Convention through the single maritime window. As I say, we'll we'll talk about that in a minute, um, to the port state uh that uh is responsible in the arrival port that the ship is heading to. The master would need to tell the flag state, the master would need to tell the ship owner, and the master would need to tell the PI Club, because only once that legal definition of stowaway has been established will the P and I Club start to take on some of the financial responsibilities that surround a uh a stowaway case. Now stowaways in themselves are generally dealt with um quite uh quickly and in a straightforward way. Most states at the IMO are signatories to the Foul Convention and will do everything they can to assist the ship owner in the removal of the stowaway from the ship. So once the master has given the authorities notice that he or she has found a stowaway on board the ship, then the port state in which you are heading towards, if it is a signatory to the FAL convention, will normally assist with the disembarkation of the stowaway at your port of arrival. But a port state can of course refuse to allow a stowaway to disembark. Port state refusal can be one of the most common and frustrating challenges to a ship owner and master who has discovered a stowaway on board the ship. Now, whilst the Fowle Convention strongly urges port states to cooperate and allow stowaways to disembark and help facilitate their their return home, sometimes the national immigration and border security of the port of destination may have its own laws in place which refuses to accept the stowaway. And this puts the master in a fairly stressful logistical position. Now, the master must comply with the requirements of the local authorities. The master can't overrule or try to overrule these local authorities if they do decide not to allow the uh stowaway to be um to be disembarked. So the master can't illegally disembark the stowaway. You know, under no circumstances should a captain attempt to sneak the stowaway ashore, or indeed force them down the gangway. Um it can result in uh in a severe criminal offence, particularly with regards to what you're essentially doing, which is assisting somebody to make a legal entry into the country. It's also a very important fact to acknowledge that having been refused entry into a port, the master must still accept responsibility for the stowaway. The stowaway remains the legal and financial responsibility of the master and ship owner until a state formally accepts them to be discharged and then repatriated or onward travel to an uh an agreed state. So, in that respect, if the stowaway is refused entry, then the master must continue to provide care on board the ship. So when you find a stowaway, the master has an obligation to look after that stowaway until the stowaway has landed, which means that the master must provide adequate food, water, sanitation, and if necessary, medical care on board the ship. The master must actively prevent escape attempts. So if a stowaway knows they have been refused entry into a country, particularly if it's the country that they wanted to go to, then the master must take reasonable steps to prevent that stowaway from escaping the ship and managing to get themselves ashore. This may mean keeping the stowaway securely contained but humanely treated whilst the ship is alongside in that port. So locking the stowaway in a cabin, ensuring that that stowaway has access to food, water and sanitation is perfectly acceptable. It's acceptable from a security and a safety point of view. And if the master is forced to do this, particularly if the stowaway is less than friendly, then the master can do so for the safety of all of those on board the ship. And that's an important point when it comes to stowaways. You do not have to give them free reign of the vessel if the master considers them to be a threat to the safety of everybody on board the ship. All the stowaway cases that I have been personally involved with have resulted in the stowaway being detained in a cabin. I've never seen a stowaway being given free reign of the ship or being allowed to eat, dine, or socialise with any of the crew. The stowaway cases that I've personally been involved in, each time the stowaway has been confined to a cabin with food, sanitation, water, everything they needed to be humanely treated, but they have not been allowed to roam around the ship or socialise with everybody, mainly for security reasons. Now, if the master can't discharge their stowaway at their arrival port, they're going to have to escalate the problem both with the PO Club, PI Club, and the ship owner. Um both of which should be informed immediately that the port state has refused to allow the ship to uh land the stowaway in the port. Now, normally once this has happened, the the PI Club would normally take the lead. So the vessel's underwriters would normally try to negotiate with the port authorities by reassuring them that they are going to pay for the repatriation of the stowaway and asking that the stowaway be allowed or be escorted to, um, for instance, the airport, uh, and transported directly if necessary to the plane's tarmac in order to get the stowaway on. But if that doesn't work, then there may be a need for the master and ship owner to involve the flag state and apply some diplomatic pressure to a port state that's refusing entry to the stowaway. At the end of the day, if the master is forced to sail with a stowaway still on board, then the notification process essentially resets itself. And under the FAU convention, you must continue to inform your next ports of call, and hopefully it's only going to be one more, that you do have the uh uh the stowaway on board. Now the stowaway to nowhere scenario can exist, it is unusual, but if subsequent ports continue to To refuse the stowaway, they can become trapped on board for weeks and in very extreme cases even months. The PI Club may eventually have to pay the repatriate the stowaway from a much more accommodating port or arrange for the ship to divert to that accommodating port in order to specifically discharge the stowaway. But that's a very, very extreme case. And PI clubs will limit their financial burdens when it does come to a ship diverting to a port specifically for the purpose of discharging a stowaway. But that may be a necessity if uh subsequent port states do not allow the stowaway to to be landed. Having a stowaway on board for large periods of time is going to be costly to the ship owner and uh therefore the P and I Club and can affect the operation of the ship, the morale of the crew, and the ability for the ship to uh to trade freely, knowing that a stowaway is on board the ship. So we mentioned there that the PI Club is going to be paying um a lot of um claims for the stowaway. Um obviously, under standard protection and indemnity club rules, the insurance is designed to indemnify the shipowner for the direct out-of-pocket expenses that that ship owner may incur in the in the management and resolution of a stowaway case. Um the cover has very, very strict limits, but let's talk about what the PI Club is expected to pay for, or perhaps would refuse to pay for. PI clubs, once they have been informed of a stowaway case, um, will normally pay repatriation and travel costs. So uh airline tickets, travel documents, immigration processing fees, these sorts of things will normally be paid by the PI Club. The PI Club will even fork out for private security and escorts, as a lot of commercial airlines will refuse to fly unescorted deportees or um known stowaways. The club will pay for specialized private contractors to travel with the stowaways to their uh their destination country and ensure that they uh uh that they are landed the care of that uh country. Umboard maintenance and welfare is obviously paid for by the PNI Club, provisions of food, water, uh bedding, clothing if necessary, hygiene products. Um it will even pay for any structural modifications needed to uh to secure the uh stowaway. So um retrofitting cabin doors with external locks is uh one um uh one example of that. Um stowaway that I had uh on a cruise ship. Uh we had to fit external locks to the doors of the cabin where we can find that stowaway, because that stowaway was far from friendly and was a very, very big lad, and was uh was capable of uh uh of battering down doorways, so we had to reinforce the door and put external locks on the cabin whilst cutting a hole in the door for us to be able to pass food and water and sanitary items through to the um uh food to the stowaway. He was a nasty piece of work, so we did have to make modifications in those cases. Um the PI Club will normally pay for medical expenses for stowaway as well. Um if there uh if there is a problem with the stowaway, then uh medical problem, then they'll cover onboard medical supplies, evacuation costs, shoreside hospital bills, stuff like that. Um deviation costs, however, are a little bit less likely to be paid for if the vessel's forced to deviate from its planned route specifically to land the stowaway. As long as the club has agreed to that deviation and they are under no obligation to agree to that deviation, they may cover the physical costs incurred, uh the extra fuel, uh pilotage, port charges, agency fees, uh things like that. Uh, they will uh they'll cover that. But they must have given permission to the master to depart from the intended voyage in order to land the stowaway, which is something that's normally only done if the master can foresee a problem with landing the stowaway in the next port or subsequent port states have declined to allow the stowaway to be landed ashore. The other thing the PI Club will pay for is um um is fines and levies. Um, administrative fines against the vessel or master purely for arriving with a stowaway on board. The club will generally help with these fines and penalties. Uh, but that's again uh not a not a guaranteed thing. Um it is important to remember that there are some things that the PI Club will end up not paying for. Loss of hire commercial delays. Um this is probably the most painful uninsured cost for a ship owner. If the vessel is delayed trying to sort out the stowaway, if uh the vessel uh comes off higher as a result, the PI Club will generally not compensate for lost time, lost profits, or miscargo deadlines in the case of a uh of a stowaway. It's a cost that the ship owner themselves will have to bear. The PI Club may not pay if they can show that there is either gross negligence or willful misconduct on behalf of the master or clue. In other words, if they colluded with the stowaway or if they blatantly refused to implement the ISPS code, then the clubs may have the right to reject the claim, uh leaving the ship owner to foot the bill. The other thing that the PI Club will not automatically pay for is ransom or extortion. So if stowaways hijack the vessel and demand money, or if a corrupt local official demands off the book bribes to allow disembarkation, for instance, the PI Club can't really legally reimburse these payments. There have been, of course, um some high profile stowaway cases um here in the United Kingdom. Um the high profile stowaway cases is too recently. The most the most um recent and perhaps the one that um uh that attracted the most attention was uh one that actually happened in Southampton, uh the uh the Narve Andromeda. Um now this was in October 2020, uh there were seven guys fleeing Nigeria. They climbed onto the rudder stock of uh of a crude oil tanker called the Narve Andro and Andromeda. They got on there and Lagos spent over a week hidden in the treacherous void space um that uh is uh above the the rudder stock before they moved on to deck. Now um as the ship approached the Isle of Wight, uh tensions uh boiled over. Um they they actually discovered these um uh these stowways uh back in uh a Spanish port, but the Spanish refused to allow them to disembark, the French refused to allow them to disembark, so that the the ship approached the uh the Alawite in the UK, with these seven guys having been discovered, uh being looked after in the um uh in the ship's accommodation. And uh they became very, very agitated as they approached the UK and uh broke out of the cabin that they were being held in, so the master, for the safety of the crew, had uh had put them in a cabin. They broke out of that cabin and uh went up to the bridge and uh um tried to force the master to allow them ashore in the UK. There was a military intervention, some of you may remember it on the news. Um at the end of the day, um the uh local UK authorities uh ordered the 22-man crew to lock themselves in the ship Citadel uh and issue a distress call, and the UK government then authorized the SBS to intervene and under the cover of darkness. Uh they went on board the ship and arrested the stirways. Stirways didn't in any way pose a threat to those authorities, they were just being a little bit vocal with the master, but the master did the right thing for to protect the crew, uh lock the crew in the citadel, and uh issue a distress, and the United Kingdom um sent the uh the boys in to recover these stirways. Um they were initially branded as as as hijackers, but um in 2021 the UK's Crown Prosecution Service actually dropped all criminal charges uh having uh looked into the case uh a little bit more, realizing the uh the desperation of these guys. And basically, um the the the the headache of the of the uh of the seven uh stowaways was transferred from the ship owner to the home office, and the home office dealt with them from uh from then on. So that's a that fairly recent um high profile stowaway case. As I said at the beginning of the uh podcast, the uh the master has an obligation to report stowaways and that reporting of a stowaway is normally in line with the FAU convention that I explained earlier on. Now, the FAU Convention has continued to um develop uh over the years and um in this year, in March of this year, the IMO have adopted an updated set of uh revised guidelines on the preventing and resolving of stowaway cases. Now the revised guidelines don't um add too much to the uh initial foul guidelines on the dealing of um stowaway cases, but basically the IMO has doubled down on its directive really that member states and port authorities must cooperate with ship owners to facilitate the disembarkation of stowaways. Um the absolute priority of the IMO is to avoid this stowaway to nowhere scenario because as the Narve Andromeda demonstrates, if continuously stirways are denied the ability to leave the ship, they do become agitated. And where they are larger numbers, such as the seven on the Narve Andromeda, then they may start to become a problem on board the ship. And this is something that we must avoid at all costs. Having a stirway feeling that nobody wants them, getting frustrated with having to remain on board the ship, and turning it from a simple stirway case into a real security threat. So the revised guidelines try to persuade member states to cooperate with ship owners to allow them to disembark stowaways, obviously, you know, everything being paid for by the P and I Club to facilitate that disembarkation, but nonetheless to allow them to actually do it in the uh in the first place. At the end of the day, the they also talks about the allocation of responsibility with stowaway cases. Now, the guidelines do make it clear that the ship owner remains financially responsible for the stowaway and therefore can claim against their uh own PI club uh whilst they're on board. Port states have a corresponding duty to process and assist with the logistics of repatriation under international human rights framework. So what it's saying is that you know a ship owner's powers are limited to the stowaway being under its control. In other words, when the stowaway's on board the ship, the master can control the food, water and sanitation. But once a stowaway has been discharged into the care of the port state for repatriation, deportation, or whatever, then that port state must have a duty to process and contribute towards the logistics of making that happen. Now, I mentioned earlier on the maritime single window, and this is where the IMO has heavily integrated stairway management into this broader digitalization of reporting. Now, uh from January the first, twenty twenty four, it it was mandatory for all ports worldwide to operate what we call a maritime single window. UK was really ahead of the curve on this. The UK started to incorporate the maritime single window in uh in 2016 under a scheme that is run by the UK Home Office. And basically, what a maritime single window is is a single point of contact for a master to report his or her arrival in a state, in a port, so that the information can be dispersed to the relevant authorities and ports that need to know. United Kingdom does this on its gov.uk website and allows the master or the master's agent to make a report under the FAU Convention through the single maritime window in the case of the UK through the gov.uk website, and having made the declarations of the arrival of the ship, the um government system itself uh disseminates that information to everybody that needs it. Now, the maritime um uh the maritime single window is something that has been under development now for around ten years, and at the end of the day, um the um the maritime single window helps a ship's master make uh his or her mandatory declarations in the simplest form. Now it is slowly moving across to a digital format. UK, as I say, introduced this digital format in 2016. The ability to meet your FAL convention requirements for reporting through a single digital portal is something that the United Kingdom has championed and something that uh is still operating and fairly efficiently today. This whole submit once philosophy is uh is something that the IMO want to push because the captain obviously is a busy, busy man or woman and doesn't have the time to sit there and fill out different forms to different people by ensuring that a single um report is made, this can be disseminated, as I say, to everybody that needs to know. So DG declarations, crew and passenger manifests, security declarations, uh maritime health declarations, custom and stores declarations, and of course, under those security declarations you would need to declare if you had a stowaway on board the uh on board the ship. And so the um uh the single window allows the master to make that all important legal declaration to the port state at which he is travelling to to say I have a stowaway on board. The stowaway is a stowaway as per the foul convention's description, and therefore everything that needs to be done to facilitate the removal and well being of the stowaway must be put into place. At the end of the day, the um the the the single window allows the master to give advance warning to a port that he's arriving with a stowaway. It can enable rapid multi-agency mobilization when the ship arrives. So you can have people down there from the security, from the police, from the uh from the home office, immigration, to to deal with the um uh the stowaway, having used that single window uh to uh to notify all the agencies involved, uh will get notification of that stowaway through the single window and uh will generally um activate a protocol in order to deal with the stowaway in the most efficient method possible to enable the ship to continue to trade, the master to focus on those things that he or she is uh more used to focusing on rather than stowaways, safety of the ship, um the uh the efficiency of the ship, etc. And to allow the um uh the stowaway to be removed from the ship um in a in a way that is going to minimize the disruption in trade to the ship and enable the P and I Club to successfully pay for the repatriation or removal of the stowaway with minimal impact on board the ship. Well, I hope you found this uh this podcast on stowaways interesting. Um stowaways I think will always be an issue on ships. Um when you hear the word stowaway, you always associate stowaway with a uh with a ship. And although um as the news and the media often tell us, um stowaways do stowaway on board other vehicles other than ships, uh such as uh such as lorries, for instance, as we've seen, particularly on uh on cross-channel freights, the word stowaway is really associated with ships. And as I've shown you at the beginning of the podcast, finding a stowaway can be a very, very stressful and and scary thing. And dealing with the stowaway, asking the stowaway where they're from, searching the stowaway, searching the area for the stowaway, finding out whether the stowaway is alone or joined with other people, finding out why the stowaway is there, and trying from a security and safety point of view to establish the scenario can be a scary, stressful, and very, very work-intensive uh activity that a ship has to uh has to deal with. Obviously, preventing the stowaway from coming on board the ship in the first place is uh is uh prevention better than cure, and compliance with the ISPS code, including ship searches prior to departure, good gangway procedures, and monitoring those people that are coming on and off the ship is essential to the prevention of stairways. Thanks a lot, guys, for uh for listening to the podcast. If you haven't subscribed already, I do urge you to subscribe to the Maritime Education Podcast, and uh we'll uh we'll come up with another podcast soon. In the meantime, guys, do have a great day, and uh we look forward to welcoming you back to the Maritime Education Podcast.