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October 2013 www.sname.org/sname/mt My advice to students and anyone else in the industry is to accept that a career in the maritime world means dealing with cycles.? that you brought in really great speakers. Can you tell us a bit about what the club is and how it got its start? MARCUS: The International Shipping Club was started and run by graduate stu- dents in the OSM Program beginning in the early 1980s, and it allowed us to combine some informal activities with our formal academic program. Industry was very sup- portive to us. Industry leaders were happy to come visit us, present their ideas to us over pizza?we just had a lot of fun with it, as well as many enjoyable ski trips for the group and eld trips to industry locations. So it was a great compliment to the formal academic program and really a lot of fun for everybody involved. Gave us a chance to let down our hair, when I had more hair [laughter], just to get to know each other bet- ter and have a lot of fun. e club continues today and I have proudly served as its fac- ulty adviser throughout its history. TEDESCO: You were the chairman of the Marine Boards committee on tank vessel design and you co-authored the National Academys book, Tanker Spills: Prevention by Design , which was published in 1991. I think this relates well to this issue of (mt) because the focus of this issue is on risk, which was a major element of what you were looking at as part of that marine board com- mittee. In what way do you feel the industry has matured in its treatment of risk, and on the ipside, what do you see as the most sig- nicant gaps in how our industry treats risk? MARCUS: Let me start with what I view as the historical process here. First you have one or more catastrophes taking place in the ship- ping industry, and so people in the shipping industry, as well as the general public say, We have to make some changes.? eres a great rush to do research and develop alternative proposals. However, this topic didnt have any great history of research. You dont really have the data you need to do a decent study, or to do the study you want, lets say, because the data doesnt all exist. So you start collecting some data, but its kind of late after the catas- trophe to think youre going to collect all the data you need to do proper research, but you do get started. And often you get your new reg- ulation before you have all the data you want. Once you get the new regulation, the money for doing more research sort of dies out and the impetus to collect more data decreases as well. I think, in the last few decades, weve sort of gone beyond that cycle. Certainly, both the International Maritime Organization and the Marine Board place a lot more attention on risk analysis now, data collection, those kinds of things. With the study I chaired in 1991, we certainly had analyses based on incomplete data; it was frustrating but we did the best we could. I was delighted to see that the Marine Board had a follow-on study with Dr. Kirsi Tikka. She chaired a study, an excel- lent study, that took a much closer look at the research methodologies and the risk analysis procedures. I think we continue to see that, people trying to collect the data to debate what the best technologies or the method- ologies are to do the risk analysis and those sorts of things. So I think weve come a long way and weve had the awareness, the atten- tion, and the acceptance that these kinds of risk analyses are here. TEDESCO: Getting back to economic cycles, youve seen a lot of maritime booms and busts. Whats your outlook for the commercial mar- itime industry going forward, not just in the U.S. but globally, and based on that, what advice might you give current students? MARCUS: Okay, as long as human nature exists shipping will be a cyclical market. We have a system that whenever things are good, people keep buying more ships until things are no longer good. So you have a built-in mechanism and the same way when youre at the bottom of the mar- ket, its bad and people keep scrapping ships and demands for cargo keeps grow- ing and nally it becomes good again. So I think were always going to have these cycles. I think in the present situation we have in the international marketplace, we will continue to see a slow recovery for most vessel types. I think the exceptions will be the liqueed gas carriers and ves- sels related to oshore energy; they both seem to be doing alright, and I think lique- ed gas carriers are going to do very well in the immediate future. e U.S. domestic market has an interesting market possi- bility with short sea shipping, which you know well. However, providing incen- tives to get new ships built in the U.S. for this domestic market requires the commit- ment of the new leadership of the Maritime Administration and the Department of Transportation. My advice to students and anyone else in the industry is to accept that a career in the maritime world means deal- ing with cycles. I think younger people, who have not experienced the complete cycle, nd it hard to believe that these cycles will really keep occurring. In the past some- times weve seen people in banks and in nancing just wanting to keep nancing vessels as the market keeps going up and up, and pretty soon you have too many ves- sels, or too many vessels on order. So the advice really is to expect that we will have cycles and plan for them. TEDESCO: You were active in SNAME as a member of the council in the 1980s. Based on that experience, and considering the outlook we just discussed with the marine industry, what do you see as challenges for SNAME looking forward? MARCUS: I think a challenge for SNAME and for schools teaching naval architecture and marine engineering is to attract more (founders and leaders) Henry S. Marcus continued