Decision Simulator

Wood Pellets at Sea - From Plan to Hatch Entrance

SELO
Bulk Carrier · Atlantic, three days from Savannah · 24 July 2025
Source: Hong Kong Marine Department report, 30 June 2026

14Decision Points 4Possible Outcomes —Avg. Play Time

The Situation

You are the master of a Hong Kong-registered bulk carrier four days out of Savannah, bound for the River Tyne, with 28,488 tonnes of wood pellets in five holds. This scenario takes you through the whole task of managing the daily hold gas test: the monitoring plan, the risk assessment review, the authorisation, the job site review and the job itself. Your earlier choices carry forward. It is a training reconstruction based on the Hong Kong investigation report; the report could not establish why the Chief Officer entered the hold, and where the scenario fills that gap it says so.

The Lesson

The controls are a chain: a written method, an assessment that respects the cargo, locked and marked entrances with a permit rule, a briefed team with a standby person, and a call to stop when equipment fails. A normal reading is a snapshot, not a clearance.

Human Element

Gas readings from days earlier taken as proof of safety, a blocked sampling point, a missing SMS procedure, a detector battery that came off, a hatch neither locked nor marked, and no standby. Five linked stages, then a rescue.

Try the First Decision

PLANNING AND PREPARATION. Day four of the passage. 28,488 tonnes of wood pellets are in all five holds. The Shipper's Cargo Declaration says the cargo depletes oxygen and asks for continuous monitoring and recording of oxygen and carbon monoxide in the holds. Your Chief Officer tests every hold each day through the sampling points on the hatch coamings: oxygen 20.9% and carbon monoxide 0 for three days running. Your SMS has no specific procedure for testing cargo holds, and today the Chief Officer reports that the sampling points are blocked by cargo. How do you plan the monitoring?

A. Write down a method now. Treat every hold as a dangerous enclosed space from loading, test from outside by lowering the sampling hose through the hatch entrance when the sampling points are blocked, record the readings as a trend, and state plainly that nobody enters a hold to test it.
B. Carry on as before. Three days of normal readings, the Chief Officer knows the routine, and a quick check each day will do.

This is a preview — the full scenario branches from here based on what you choose, with real consequences and a debrief at the end.

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