ScenicRoute

Okay you got us – ScenicRoute was a joke. 

However, we didn’t select this topic at random. The idea that a vessel’s crew might deserve to experience something of the world they are crossing – that the sea might be more than a distance to be minimised – felt worth saying. Even if it took a fictional product to say it. 

Here’s what’s actually true: 

An estimated 1.9 million seafarers are responsible for carrying around 90% of the world’s traded goods. They do so in conditions that the industry rarely discusses – not nearly as often as it covers fuel efficiency, decarbonisation targets, or schedule reliability. 

Research involving over 13,000 seafarers across 154 nationalities has found that isolation, prolonged separation from family, and poor psychological safety onboard are among the most significant contributors to poor mental health and early career exit. A separate industry health survey of 36,400 seafarers – conducted across 52 companies in 2024 – found that 16% had experienced bullying or harassment in the preceding two years, and that between 25 and 30% did not feel they could speak up when they made a mistake.

Approximately 20,000 seafarers are stranded in a warzone. Following military action in the region from late February 2026, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has left an estimated 3,200 commercial vessels confined west of the chokepoint – with around 20,000 seafarers abroad, unable to leave and unable to dock. At least eight seafarers have died in incidents within the region since the conflict began. 

In response, the IMO has condemned the attacks on merchant shipping, calling for an immediate halt to hostilities affecting civilian vessels, and directed IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez to begin negotiations toward a humanitarian corridor. However, the majority of global response remains focused primarily on energy markets, oil prices, and supply chain disruptions. The people aboard those 3,200 vessels have been, by and large, a footnote within the conflict.

In 2024, the IMO-WISTA Women in Maritime Survey – the most comprehensive dataset of its kind – found that women account for just 1% of the active global seafaring workforce. Not 10%. 1%. 

The IMO Secretary-General described the figure as reflecting an urgent need for continued commitment and action within workforce diversity. WISTA International President Elpi Petraki noted that the barriers to enter the industry included gender stereotyping, workplace safety concerns, a lack of family-friendly policies, and a persistent gender pay gap. These barriers continue to limit opportunities for women across the maritime industry – both on and offshore. 

This isn’t just a pipeline problem – but a retention and culture issue as well. It’s costing the industry talent it cannot afford to lose: the Global Maritime Forum projects a need for an additional 89,510 officers by 2026, against a backdrop of a workforce shortage already at a 17-year high.

Seafarer wellbeing is no longer a welfare consideration according to a report titled The Human Heart of Sustainable Shipping, published by the Seafarers Hospital Society in November 2025. Operational priorities stand at higher importance now – a precondition for achieving them. The report argued that the industry cannot reach its decarbonisation and digitalisation goals without a supported, diverse, and retained workforce, calling for a shift from reactive welfare provision to systemic investment. 

PortXchange exists to make port calls more efficient and predictable. We build tools that help vessels, terminals, and port authorities coordinate – reducing waiting time, cutting emissions, and keeping supply chains moving.

That work is only meaningful if the people at the centre of it are treated as the centre of it.

The seafaring profession has, over the past few decades, become significantly harder and, by many accounts, significantly less rewarding. The adventure that once defined it has been compressed out by optimisation, short port turnarounds, and the relentless pressure of schedule performance. The shortage of seafarers the industry now faces is not unrelated to this. And events in the Strait of Hormuz serve as a sharp reminder that the risks borne by crew – always present, rarely acknowledged – can become acute without warning, in waters that the rest of the world is watching for entirely different reasons.

ScenicRoute was a joke. But the question underneath it – what would it actually mean to make a career at sea something people choose with enthusiasm, and stay in with confidence – is not.

We don’t have the answer. But we think it is worth asking, and we think the industry is ready to take it seriously.