Carrying World Trade. Carrying the Risks. — A Message for Every Seafarer Today

If you're reading this from a ship right now — on watch, just off watch, or about to go on — thank you. Today isn't about a regulation or a procedure. For once, this one's just for you.

Today, 25 June, is the Day of the Seafarer — established by the IMO back in 2010, observed every year since, recognizing the roughly 1.9 million seafarers who keep the world actually running while most of the world never thinks about it.

This year's theme is "Carrying World Trade. Carrying the Risks." That isn't a vague slogan. Over 90% of everything the world buys, sells, and consumes moves by sea — and right now, a real share of that trade is moving through some of the most tense waters on the planet. The Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz. The wider Middle East. The same regions behind several of the security advisories that have come out of DG Shipping itself in just the past few months.

Real numbers behind that theme: more than 20,000 seafarers were reportedly left stranded by the recent tensions in the Strait of Hormuz alone. Real people. Real families waiting at home. Doing a job that barely anyone on land ever has to think about, in conditions most people would never sign up for once, let alone for a full career.

I've sailed those kinds of routes myself. Sat through bridge watches where the news and the navigation chart were telling two different versions of the same tension. The cargo still has to move. The job still has to get done. That's the part the world almost never sees — it's not just the technical skill, it's the willingness to keep showing up for work this demanding, month after month, far from everyone who loves you.

So if you're one of the 1.9 million people doing this right now — be proud of it. Not quietly. Genuinely. You're not a footnote to global trade. You are global trade, every single day, doing it in conditions most people would walk away from on day one.

Thank you for everything you carry — the cargo, and the risk that comes with it.

If you've got a story from your own time at sea — a route, a moment, a thing that's stayed with you — write in and tell me. I'd genuinely like to hear it. And if you know a seafarer who needs to read this today, send it their way.