THE shipping industry has a problem that it doesn’t like to talk about. A dark secret.

Safety standards, by and large, have been steadily improving over recent decades. Ship casualties and incidents reached an all-time low, in spite of a global pandemic and a steady tightening of regulatory standards have raised the bar across the board.

But there is a significant and growing fleet of ships to which none of this applies.

An unprecedented deluge of sanctions has divided the industry between those operating within the established rules-based order of safety conventions, class, insurance and international oversight, versus a worryingly large section of the fleet that has disappeared off the radar.

The serious and significant safety threat that the dark fleet poses has been well documented, not least by Lloyd’s List. But the ships themselves are only part of the problem. There is a whole infrastructure that is supporting this return to opacity at the bottom of the industry.

This is not simply another sanctions story.

Fraudulently flagged ships are hopping effortlessly between registries unable or unwilling to tackle their lawless flouting of the established rules-based order. These are vessels that in some cases make the dark fleet look like law abiding citizens by comparison — often with no flag, no insurance and an impenetrable nexus of state-sponsored opacity readily supporting their illicit movements behind the scenes.

These ships do not operate in isolation — they only exist and are able to trade because they are able to operate with a combination of direct support and tacit complicity from companies, institutions and governments willing to turn a blind eye.

The support networks are complicated and opaque, but at the top of it all there are governments failing to provide meaningful oversight of ships flying their flag.

And that’s where the podcast this week is focusing — safety standards at the top of the industry may have largely improved, but the worst bits of shipping are getting worse, and that is a serious problem for everyone.

Talking on the podcast this week:

• RightShip chief executive, Steen Brodsgaard Lund

• International Chamber of Shipping secretary-general, Guy Platten