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This Week in Maritime Regs: Alternative-Fuel Spill Guidance, a New PSC Cargo-Securing Campaign, and Three Piracy Bulletins in One Week

🕑 5 min read words Regulatory

Alternative Fuels Get Real Spill-Response Guidance

The UK P&I Club published two parallel pieces of guidance this week worth reading together: Ammonia — Alternative Fuel Spill Response Considerations and Methanol — Alternative Fuel Spill Response Considerations. Both fuels are moving from pilot projects to real newbuild orders faster than most crews' spill-response training is catching up. Ammonia's toxicity profile and methanol's near-invisible flame are different problems from a conventional bunker spill, and treating either one like a fuel-oil response is the wrong starting assumption. If your fleet has any alternative-fuel newbuilds on order, this is worth putting in front of whoever owns your SOPEP/SMPEP revisions now, not at delivery.

A New PSC Campaign Aimed Squarely at Cargo Securing

DNV flagged that the 2026 Concentrated Inspection Campaign (CIC) on cargo securing is coming — “be prepared” is the actual headline of their own guidance, which tells you how seriously they're treating it. Cargo securing arrangements are exactly the kind of compliance area that looks fine at a glance and falls apart under a genuinely close inspection: lashing equipment condition, securing manuals matching actual cargo plans, and crew familiarity with the vessel-specific securing arrangements are all fair game once a CIC is running. Worth a proper internal audit before inspectors arrive with a checklist built specifically for this. The Cyprus Shipping Deputy Ministry got ahead of it directly: on 15–16 July it co-ran a two-day training seminar with the Med MoU Secretariat specifically on the Concentrated Inspection Campaign on Cargo Securing, in Limassol, for 27 PSC inspectors from 11 Mediterranean member states. If your own inspectors or DPA haven’t been through equivalent CIC-specific training yet, that’s a good template to ask for.

Three Piracy and Security Bulletins, Three Different Waters

Liberia issued three separate Marine Security Bulletins this week: 23/2026 on piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden, 22/2026 on the security situation in the southern Red Sea and Bab el Mandeb, and 21/2026 on a security incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Three different chokepoints, three different threat profiles, in one week's paperwork — a reminder that Red Sea/Houthi coverage dominating headlines doesn't mean the Gulf of Aden's older piracy risk, or entirely separate incidents elsewhere, have gone quiet. ReCAAP's weekly piracy report and the ICS Secretary General's statement this week both underline the same point from different angles: seafarer safety in contested waters is a live, current concern, not a historical one.

EU Sanctions: The 21st Package

Cyprus, Malta, and effectively every major P&I club (Britannia, Gard, Japan P&I, NorthStandard, Shipowners' Club, Skuld, Swedish Club, West) issued guidance this week on the 21st package of EU restrictive measures against Russia. Cyprus's own Sanctions Information Notice 3/2026 frames it explicitly against “the gravity of the situation in Ukraine.” If your vessel, charterer, or cargo chain touches Russian trade in any way, treat this round of measures as current compliance material — sanctions guidance updates this frequently and this broadly for a reason.

Fishing Vessels: New Flooding-Prevention Guidance

The UK's MGN165 Amendment 2 (F), published this week, updates guidance on bilge systems and flooding prevention for fishing vessels — a response to 29 vessels lost out of 86 flooding/foundering incidents between 2016 and 2024. Full breakdown here, including the bilge alarm, pump-testing and hull-integrity checks the guidance actually recommends.

Pilot Transfer Arrangements — the Same Story, From Four Directions

Malta, Lloyd's Register, and the Korean Register (twice) all issued guidance this week on the same underlying change: revised IMO pilot transfer arrangement requirements, entering force 1 January 2028. It lands the same week as a MAIB investigation into a fatal fall from a bulk carrier's pilot ladder. Full timeline and what already applies today, here.

Class, P&I and Compliance Items Worth Five Minutes

ABS released two updates: Regulatory News 11/2026 on escape from machinery spaces of Category A, and 12/2026, a Letter to Industry on the Plimsoll mark figure on Load Line Certificates.
Polish Register of Shipping issued Rule 130/P on Offshore Wind Farms — relevant to anyone working the offshore renewables sector.
NorthStandard is working with RightShip to reduce survey burden on ships — worth watching if your fleet carries a heavy vetting/survey load already.
West published a new hatch cover video series — a genuinely practical training resource for a component that shows up constantly in cargo-damage claims.
UK Chamber of Shipping released a practical passage-planning guide for the English Channel, Dover Strait and southern North Sea — one of the busiest, most COLREGs-dense stretches of water in the world.
BIMCO welcomed a proposal to include Indian ship recycling yards on the EU's approved list, while the World Shipping Council pushed for a performance-based approach to responsible ship recycling in a separate EC proposal — two takes on the same regulatory direction of travel.
IIMS, citing IMCA's own safety statistics, reported fatalities more than doubled even as injury rates improved — worth reading as a reminder that frequency and severity don't always move together.

IMO: What's Moving Through the System

The Sub-Committee on Implementation of IMO Instruments (III 12) reported this week, alongside circulars covering the 1992 Oil Pollution Fund Protocol, Colombia's accession to both the Load Lines and SOLAS Protocols, and continued work on the draft MARPOL Annex VI net-zero framework amendments. None of these change anything for a working crew this week, but they're the pipeline for what will.

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick MARPOL/compliance round and see how you score.