March 2017 Comments & Letters

Reversing course on USMMA Sea Year
   On Jan. 11, Secretary of Transportation nominee Elaine Chao received a warm welcome during her Senate confirmation hearing. Introduced by her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and answering to a dais of familiar faces, the long-time Washington insider faced few contentious questions and provided few substantive responses.
   One question in particular, however, garnered a robust reaction from Secretary Chao. When Missouri Senator Roger Wicker brought up a little-known issue with far-reaching implications for national security, global trade and women’s empowerment, the incoming secretary could not have been more clear on her stance: if confirmed, she said, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) would be the first order of business taken up by the Maritime Administration.
   Since 1974, USMMA has empowered women to join and become integral members of the global shipping industry—until 2016, that is. In a reversal of this positive trend, the Department of Transportation’s decision to indefinitely suspend the academy’s Sea Year pro- gram aboard commercial vessels levied unforeseen consequences on the next generation of female maritime leaders. And while current Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx ostensibly lifted the suspension this month, there is still work to be done.
   USMMA is not a typical college. The academics are rigorous, and the training exceptional. There are very few institutions where you can earn a degree, a license and a commission, and graduate with a guarantee that you can either maneuver any ship on which you set foot, or operate the machinery in said ship. The year midshipmen spend at sea aboard commercial vessels offers them access to this necessary skillset, and as far as I know, no other curriculum can provide the same level of education.
   This hands-on experience ensures that Kings Point graduates are not just mariners, but future leaders, from policymakers like former Maritime Administrator Sean Connaughton, to space travel pioneer-turned-activist Mark Kelly, to Ivy Barton Suter, who graduated in the first class of female Kings Pointers and went on to earn her Harvard MBA and lead numerous companies. But if the Department of Transportation fails to restore Sea Year, the academy will inevitably lose its competitive edge.
   The Maritime Administration suspended Sea Year on the basis of personal safety of midshipmen, despite a lack of evidence supporting their assertion. To be clear, this was a radical policy decision; Sea Year has never in its 75 years of operation been halted. Not even during World War II, when 142 midshipmen lost their lives at sea, did the government deem this mission-critical training unsafe.
   As a senior officer aboard a commercial vessel, I take the administration’s decision personally; accusing our ships of fostering an unsafe environment is an affront to me, my shipmates, shipping companies, and the global maritime industry. An integral part of my job is training midshipmen and ensuring their safety, and I take pride in fostering a familial, professional environment. Like any other setting, there lies a risk of a rogue bad actor, but we have dedicated measures in place to discipline or remove these individuals from our organizations.
   I freely admit that women mariners face greater challenges than our counterparts in other industries. Most of the time, I occupy the role of lone female aboard ships (and hear more than a little salty language), but excelling at my job has garnered respect from and equality to the men with whom I work every day, year-round. These men have gone beyond merely accepting me. Throughout my career, they have become mentors, coaches, and advisors, and often de facto family members.
   And yet, the Department of Transportation never consulted the commercial shipping industry or women mariners before it abruptly suspended Sea Year, despite our professional work environment being deemed unsafe.
   From shipping companies to policymakers to alumni and parents, we all agree that one instance of sexual misconduct is one too many. While I personally never witnessed such incidents as a cadet or a professional mariner, I understand the need to proactively address the issue both at sea and on campus, and so does the industry. In fact, shipping companies have rigorous policies in place to prevent and react to allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s recent common-sense proposals, which do not require legislative action to implement, will further bolster safeguards aboard vessels and at Kings Point.
   With these considerations in mind, ensuring the expeditious restoration of Sea Year should be at the forefront of the incoming administration’s agenda. Midshipmen who have “gone to sea” since June have been placed aboard training ships that cannot provide the level of experiential learning synonymous with a Kings Point education. Passively watching—along with 40 other students—a trained professional complete a task a midshipman must master to graduate simply will not cut it.
   Even worse, far too many USMMA students have been forced to move home, with no ship assignment and diminished hopes of completing their training and graduating on schedule. Shockingly, academy leadership has failed to arrange on-campus housing or classes for these midshipmen. The administration must now work to ensure Secretary Foxx’s reinstatement of Sea Year comes to fruition before even more future leaders miss out on mission-critical training.
   This month, Secretary Chao will take office as the 18th Secretary of Transportation; she will be only the third woman appointed to this esteemed position in the federal agency’s 50-year history. In this moment, we should celebrate the female champions of the transportation industry, the trailblazers who have broken through the barriers to become leaders in a traditionally male-dominated environment. Failing to restore Sea Year in full will have the opposite effect; it threatens to halt the very progress that Secretary Chao represents.

Andrea Morrison
chief mate, Crowley Maritime; member, USMMA Sexual Assault and Harassment Task Force
Bremerton, Wash.

Container alliance consolidation to cut rates?
   By now, we’ve likely all heard about the incredible level of consolidation taking place in the ocean carrier industry, both on a company level and with the vessel sharing alliances that allow carriers to fill their increasingly large ships.
   What you might not have heard is that the planned restructuring of those alliances, which will see most of the remaining global carriers consolidated from four groups into just three, could actually cause rates to fall on the transpacific trade, according to recent research from the Federal Maritime Commission’s Office of Economics and Competition Analysis.
   Let that sink in for a minute. Alliance consolidation, spurred by persistent overcapacity and a plummeting of freight rates on most global trades to the point where pricing in some cases has dropped below operating expenses, could result in a further reduction in rates.
   FMC Commissioner Rebecca Dye, who gave members of the National Industrial Transportation League a sneak peek at the study at NITL’s annual transportation summit in early February, noted the decrease could be “offset by upward rate pressure due to expected mergers,” but even this is tough to imagine unless those mergers result in a rectification of the fundamental supply and demand imbalance that drove rates down in the first place.
   In essence, the consolidation of carriers into larger cooperative agreements— as opposed to competing for market share as independent entities—was meant to enable carriers to cut costs and better control capacity and, in turn, rates. The idea that this consolidation could actually serve to push rates downward should be more than a little scary for carriers, who by even the most conservative estimates lost a combined $10 billion in 2016. (Ben Meyer and Chris Dupin)