Note on a meeting of IMO NCSR11: 4– 13 June 2024

Report by Kim Fisher, FRIN

The meeting of the sub-committee on Navigation, Communications, Search and Rescue was intended to be held under the chairmanship Nigel Clifford of New Zealand but he had retired and was unable to take the chair. The vice chair Alexander Schwarz of Germany was also unavailable as he had been moved to other work in the German Administration. The meeting thus began with the election of new officers – Joris Brouwers of the Netherlands as chair (he previously had chaired the NAV working group) and Capt. Cerdo Espejo of Chile as vice chair. It was an eight day meeting but the Maritime Safety Committee is pressing for a return to a five day meeting. Ways of reducing the workload were discussed without any real conclusions. The next meeting has been agreed to be eight days again.

There were statements on the ongoing situation in Ukraine, the Red sea, and a new issue, jamming of GPS by North Korea. No specific actions were identified for these and no outputs were required from the meeting.

At the previous meeting there had been considerable discussion on proposals to amend SOLAS to improve the safety of pilot transfer arrangements which resulted in the setting up of a correspondence group led by China. The correspondence group report led to a significant workload for the meeting but successfully concluded with draft revisions to SOLAS regulation V/23, revised performance standards for pilot transfer arrangements, and a Circular on voluntary early implementation of the revised SOLAS V/23. The International Maritime Pilots' Association (IMPA) was invited to submit further consequential editorial updates directly to the next meeting of the Maritime Safety Committee.

The previous meeting had referred proposals for the introduction of a VHF data exchange system (VDES) as a possible replacement for the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to a correspondence group led by Japan. There was considerable discussion in this which resulted in general agreement that VDES should be introduced through chapter V (navigation) of SOLAS and not chapter IV (radiocommunications) as a voluntary option. More work was needed to prepare draft amendments to SOLAS and complete performance standards and the correspondence group was re-instated.

Proposals for performance standards for NAVDAT, intended to be a possible replacement for NAVTEX had been held over from the last meeting. The meeting successfully completed the performance standards and a revision of resolution MSC.509(105) on provision of radio services, and invited the IMO NAVTEX coordinating panel to develop a NAVDAT coordination scheme. Further work was forwarded to the next meeting of the Joint IMO/ITU Experts Group.

The last meeting had referred the issue of increased costs for Maritime Safety Information (MSI) providers as new GMDSS satellite service providers are recognised in addition to Inmarsat to the Maritime Safety Committee for advice. The Committee had subsequently instructed NCSR to prepare draft amendments to the SOLAS Convention clearly stating the requirement for dissemination of MSI and search and rescue information through all recognised satellite service providers (RMSS), and set a target date of 31 December 2026 for full dissemination by existing RMSS. A revision was made to resolution A.707(17) on charging, but the work was not otherwise completed and was referred to the next meeting of the Joint IMO/ITU Experts Group.

Proposals to revise the criteria for the provision of new GMDSS satellite service providers (resolution A.1001(25)) had been referred by the last meeting back to a correspondence group led by France. The new proposals led to considerable discussion but ultimately resulted in a revised resolution.

The issue of unlawful practices in the “dark fleet” associated with the manipulation of data transmissions from the AIS and tampering of AIS transponders was again discussed. Some modifications were made to the performance standards for AIS to incorporate the ship IMO number and a manufacturer identity. A proposal was made for the audits of the Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) system to use twelve months of data and not one month as at present to help in identifying wrongly reporting ships and the International Maritime Satellite Organization (IMSO) offered to conduct a trial.

Issues on the implementation of S-100 charts and operational guidance on route exchange were discussed and a correspondence set up to generate guidelines on the use of electronic nautical publications (ENP) to be led by Korea.

Amendments were agreed to the ship' routeing system TSS "In the approaches to Hook of Holland and at North Hinder" together with a revised recommendation on navigation for containerships in traffic separation schemes “Off Vlieland, Terschelling-German Bight, Off Friesland and German Bight western approach”, and draft areas to be avoided around oil rigs “off the Brazilian coast – Santos Basin”.

At the end of the meeting the retirement was announced of Christian Rissone of France and Jean-Charles Cornillou also of France.

The next meeting of NCSR is planned for 13 to 22 May 2025. A meeting of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 109) is planned for 2 to 6 June December 2024. A meeting of the Joint IMO/ITU Experts Group is planned for 7 to 11 October 2024. A meeting of the ICAO/IMO Joint Working Group is planned for 4 to 8 November 2024.