Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
During the night we approached Israel and this kept the dog shift on the bridge fully occupied. Israel has a sort of layered security system which means you have to call in every step of the way and you might be called in between your compulsory calls as well. 100 miles (never works very well as it is too far for the VHF to reach) 25 miles, 12 miles and then again near the pilot station. **Then you see fast moving blips on the Radar screen which are torpedo boats or similar moving around without having any navigation or other lights visible. Occasionally you see even a submarine popping up although the dog shift did not see any this time. So plenty of security around from the shore side and of course the ship did not stay behind. In principle, the flag state or the visiting state decides the level of security. This is called the MARSEC level. There are three levels. I = normal; where we only follow the regular requirements.* II = heightened. Now there are extra patrols on the ship, spot checks and restrictions on visitors. III = Maximize all security measures possible. This means no visitors, no loading of any kind, under water inspections etc. etc. basically now we do everything that can be done with whatever we have available on board. If a home port would ever go to level III than we could not call there to embark/disembark guests so raising a security level can have grave implications. Tunisia went to level III after the recent attacks on the museum and thus no cruise ship is calling there at the moment. Only when the MARSEC level is lowered again might the cruise companies be tempted to return. I did not see our Security Officer walking around with a helmet on this morning so I assume that HAL did not dictate that much of an increase. Israel is already doing more than enough. The tour to Jaffa was partly by Bus and then on foot through the little old town. Jaffa turned out to be […]
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During the night we approached Israel and this kept the dog shift on the bridge fully occupied. Israel has a sort of layered security system which means you have to call in every step of the way and you might be called in between your compulsory calls as well. 100 miles (never works very well as it is too far for the VHF to reach) 25 miles, 12 miles and then again near the pilot station. **Then you see fast moving blips on the Radar screen which are torpedo boats or similar moving around without having any navigation or other lights visible. Occasionally you see even a submarine popping up although the dog shift did not see any this time. So plenty of security around from the shore side and of course the ship did not stay behind. In principle, the flag state or the visiting state decides the level of security. This is called the MARSEC level. There are three levels. I = normal; where we only follow the regular requirements.* II = heightened. Now there are extra patrols on the ship, spot checks and restrictions on visitors. III = Maximize all security measures possible. This means no visitors, no loading of any kind, under water inspections etc. etc. basically now we do everything that can be done with whatever we have available on board. If a home port would ever go to level III than we could not call there to embark/disembark guests so raising a security level can have grave implications. Tunisia went to level III after the recent attacks on the museum and thus no cruise ship is calling there at the moment. Only when the MARSEC level is lowered again might the cruise companies be tempted to return. I did not see our Security Officer walking around with a helmet on this morning so I assume that HAL did not dictate that much of an increase. Israel is already doing more than enough. The tour to Jaffa was partly by Bus and then on foot through the little old town. Jaffa turned out to be […]
Click here to view the article.
