10 Fun Facts about World Maritime Day

This year, World Maritime Day will be officially observed by the United Nations on September 24, 2015. With this date fast approaching, I thought it would be fun to discover and share facts about this special day.

1. Every Year around the end of September, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) recognizes and celebrates World Maritime Day.

2. The IMO is a specialized agency of the United Nations, and conceived World Maritime Day in 1978 to promote and communicate IMO’s achievements and objectives around a central theme.

3. The first World Maritime Day in 1978 was to mark the IMO Convention’s entry into force.

4. The focus this year is on “Maritime Education and Training”, to help further shine the light on the adequacy and quality of training. Are we meeting the needs of our industry to ensure safe and secure operations as well as a sustainable qualified and professionally competent workforce today and in the future?

5. The 2015 theme for the “Day of the Seafarer”, celebrated earlier on June 25, was “A Career at Sea” to align with this year’s World Maritime Day focus as well as launching the “IMO Maritime Ambassadors Scheme” to ignite interest in maritime careers.

6. A main catalyst for this year’s focus is the predicted shortfall of mariners.

7. IMO’s underlying belief is that training and education are key for seafarers to put into practice what is required of them.

8. IMO World Maritime Day themes for the last 5 years were:

2010: Year of the Seafarer

2011: Piracy

2012: One hundred years after the Titanic

2013: Sustainable Development

2014: IMO Conventions – Effective Implementations

9. Japan hosted the “World Maritime Parallel Day Event” on July 20-21, 2015.

10. The North America World Maritime Day event will be celebrating World Maritime Day at MITAGS (Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies) October 5-7, Linthicum Heights, MD.