0:00:00.572,0:00:02.347
A couple of years ago,

0:00:02.347,0:00:04.411
Harvard Business School chose

0:00:04.411,0:00:07.314
the best business model of that year.

0:00:07.314,0:00:11.164
It chose Somali piracy.

0:00:11.164,0:00:13.347
Pretty much around the same time,

0:00:13.347,0:00:19.103
I discovered that there were 544 seafarers

0:00:19.103,0:00:22.489
being held hostage on ships,

0:00:22.489,0:00:24.687
often anchored just off the Somali coast

0:00:24.687,0:00:27.047
in plain sight.

0:00:27.047,0:00:29.694
And I learned these two facts, and I thought,

0:00:29.694,0:00:32.243
what's going on in shipping?

0:00:32.243,0:00:34.783
And I thought, would that happen[br]in any other industry?

0:00:34.783,0:00:38.326
Would we see 544 airline pilots

0:00:38.326,0:00:40.139
held captive in their jumbo jets

0:00:40.139,0:00:43.519
on a runway for months, or a year?

0:00:43.519,0:00:47.315
Would we see 544 Greyhound bus drivers?

0:00:47.315,0:00:49.147
It wouldn't happen.

0:00:49.147,0:00:51.755
So I started to get intrigued.

0:00:51.755,0:00:53.748
And I discovered another fact,

0:00:53.748,0:00:56.252
which to me was more astonishing

0:00:56.252,0:00:59.368
almost for the fact that I hadn't known it before

0:00:59.368,0:01:02.092
the age of 42, 43.

0:01:02.092,0:01:05.670
That is how fundamentally we still depend

0:01:05.670,0:01:07.587
on shipping.

0:01:07.587,0:01:09.691
Because perhaps the general public

0:01:09.691,0:01:12.924
thinks of shipping as an old-fashioned industry,

0:01:12.924,0:01:15.324
something brought by sailboat

0:01:15.324,0:01:18.509
with Moby Dicks and Jack Sparrows.

0:01:18.509,0:01:20.772
But shipping isn't that.

0:01:20.772,0:01:25.496
Shipping is as crucial to us as it has ever been.

0:01:25.496,0:01:30.144
Shipping brings us 90 percent of world trade.

0:01:30.144,0:01:34.847
Shipping has quadrupled in size since 1970.

0:01:34.847,0:01:37.855
We are more dependent on it now than ever.

0:01:37.855,0:01:41.583
And yet, for such an enormous industry

0:01:41.583,0:01:44.968
— there are a hundred thousand[br]working vessels on the sea —

0:01:44.968,0:01:48.407
it's become pretty much invisible.

0:01:48.407,0:01:52.557
Now that sounds absurd in Singapore to say that,

0:01:52.557,0:01:54.903
because here shipping is so present

0:01:54.903,0:01:58.285
that you stuck a ship on top of a hotel.

0:01:58.285,0:02:00.165
(Laughter)

0:02:00.165,0:02:02.069
But elsewhere in the world,

0:02:02.069,0:02:04.412
if you ask the general public what they know

0:02:04.412,0:02:07.051
about shipping and how much[br]trade is carried by sea,

0:02:07.051,0:02:11.759
you will get essentially a blank face.

0:02:11.759,0:02:13.776
You will ask someone on the street

0:02:13.776,0:02:15.576
if they've heard of Microsoft.

0:02:15.576,0:02:17.412
I should think they'll say yes,

0:02:17.412,0:02:19.392
because they'll know that they make software

0:02:19.392,0:02:21.456
that goes on computers,

0:02:21.456,0:02:24.632
and occasionally works.

0:02:24.632,0:02:28.267
But if you ask them if they've heard of Maersk,

0:02:28.267,0:02:31.008
I doubt you'd get the same response,

0:02:31.008,0:02:32.786
even though Maersk,

0:02:32.786,0:02:35.952
which is just one shipping company amongst many,

0:02:35.952,0:02:38.920
has revenues pretty much on a par with Microsoft.

0:02:38.920,0:02:40.648
[$60.2 billion]

0:02:40.648,0:02:42.786
Now why is this?

0:02:42.786,0:02:44.528
A few years ago,

0:02:44.528,0:02:48.048
the First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty

0:02:48.048,0:02:49.744
— he is called the First Sea Lord,

0:02:49.744,0:02:53.178
although the chief of the army[br]is not called a landlord —

0:02:53.178,0:02:56.328
he said that we, and he meant

0:02:56.328,0:02:59.102
in the industrialized nations in the West,

0:02:59.102,0:03:02.945
that we suffer from sea blindness.

0:03:02.945,0:03:04.728
We are blind to the sea

0:03:04.728,0:03:07.454
as a place of industry or of work.

0:03:07.454,0:03:09.623
It's just something we fly over,

0:03:09.623,0:03:12.690
a patch of blue on an airline map.

0:03:12.690,0:03:16.037
Nothing to see, move along.

0:03:16.037,0:03:19.738
So I wanted to open my own eyes

0:03:19.738,0:03:22.446
to my own sea blindness,

0:03:22.446,0:03:26.002
so I ran away to sea.

0:03:26.002,0:03:28.428
A couple of years ago, I took a passage

0:03:28.428,0:03:30.770
on the Maersk Kendal,

0:03:30.770,0:03:32.497
a mid-sized container ship

0:03:32.497,0:03:35.387
carrying nearly 7,000 boxes,

0:03:35.387,0:03:37.314
and I departed from Felixstowe,

0:03:37.314,0:03:39.154
on the south coast of England,

0:03:39.154,0:03:41.346
and I ended up right here in Singapore

0:03:41.346,0:03:42.994
five weeks later,

0:03:42.994,0:03:47.882
considerably less jet-lagged than I am right now.

0:03:47.882,0:03:50.970
And it was a revelation.

0:03:50.970,0:03:53.018
We traveled through five seas,

0:03:53.018,0:03:55.650
two oceans, nine ports,

0:03:55.650,0:03:58.474
and I learned a lot about shipping.

0:03:58.474,0:04:00.269
And one of the first things that surprised me

0:04:00.269,0:04:02.394
when I got on board Kendal

0:04:02.394,0:04:05.216
was, where are all the people?

0:04:05.216,0:04:06.960
I have friends in the Navy who tell me

0:04:06.960,0:04:10.096
they sail with a thousand sailors at a time,

0:04:10.096,0:04:13.377
but on Kendal there were only 21 crew.

0:04:13.377,0:04:16.192
Now that's because shipping is very efficient.

0:04:16.192,0:04:19.363
Containerization has made it very efficient.

0:04:19.363,0:04:21.488
Ships have automation now.

0:04:21.488,0:04:24.263
They can operate with small crews.

0:04:24.263,0:04:26.056
But it also means that, in the words

0:04:26.056,0:04:28.328
of a port chaplain I once met,

0:04:28.328,0:04:30.265
the average seafarer you're going to find

0:04:30.265,0:04:34.327
on a container ship is either tired or exhausted,

0:04:34.327,0:04:36.769
because the pace of modern shipping

0:04:36.769,0:04:39.735
is quite punishing for what shipping calls

0:04:39.735,0:04:41.705
its human element,

0:04:41.705,0:04:44.372
a strange phrase which they don't seem to realize

0:04:44.372,0:04:47.160
sounds a little bit inhuman.

0:04:47.160,0:04:49.927
So most seafarers now working on container ships

0:04:49.927,0:04:53.727
often have less than two hours in port at a time.

0:04:53.727,0:04:55.535
They don't have time to relax.

0:04:55.535,0:04:57.455
They're at sea for months at a time,

0:04:57.455,0:04:59.156
and even when they're on board,

0:04:59.156,0:05:00.735
they don't have access to what

0:05:00.735,0:05:04.845
a five year old would take for granted, the internet.

0:05:04.845,0:05:06.519
And another thing that surprised me

0:05:06.519,0:05:08.199
when I got on board Kendal

0:05:08.199,0:05:10.456
was who I was sitting next to.

0:05:10.456,0:05:12.604
Not the queen.

0:05:12.604,0:05:15.823
I can't imagine why they put me under her portrait.

0:05:15.823,0:05:18.423
But around that dining table in the officer's saloon,

0:05:18.423,0:05:20.359
I was sitting next to a Burmese guy,

0:05:20.359,0:05:23.608
I was opposite a Romanian, a Moldavian, an Indian.

0:05:23.608,0:05:25.783
On the next time, it was a Chinese guy.

0:05:25.783,0:05:28.933
And in the crew room, it was entirely Filipinos.

0:05:28.933,0:05:31.664
So that was a normal working ship.

0:05:31.664,0:05:33.839
Now how is that possible?

0:05:33.839,0:05:35.823
Because the biggest dramatic change

0:05:35.823,0:05:37.607
in shipping over the last 60 years,

0:05:37.607,0:05:39.948
when most of the general public stopped noticing it,

0:05:39.948,0:05:42.767
was something called an open registry,

0:05:42.767,0:05:45.480
or a flag of convenience.

0:05:45.480,0:05:48.056
Ships can now fly the flag or any nation

0:05:48.056,0:05:50.711
that provides a flag registry.

0:05:50.711,0:05:53.263
You can get a flag from the land-locked nation

0:05:53.263,0:05:55.603
of Bolivia, or Mongolia,

0:05:55.603,0:05:58.285
or North Korea, though that's not very popular.

0:05:58.285,0:05:59.816
(Laughter)

0:05:59.816,0:06:01.881
So we have these very multinational,

0:06:01.881,0:06:06.449
global, mobile crews on ships.

0:06:06.449,0:06:09.513
And that was a surprise to me.

0:06:09.513,0:06:12.537
And when we got to pirate waters,

0:06:12.537,0:06:15.586
down the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait[br]and into the Indian Ocean,

0:06:15.586,0:06:17.523
the ship changed.

0:06:17.523,0:06:20.450
And that was also shocking, because suddenly,

0:06:20.450,0:06:22.803
I realized, as the captain said to me,

0:06:22.803,0:06:24.729
that I had been crazy to choose to go

0:06:24.729,0:06:27.857
through pirate waters on a container ship.

0:06:27.857,0:06:29.925
We were no longer allowed on deck.

0:06:29.925,0:06:32.305
There were double pirate watches.

0:06:32.305,0:06:35.383
And at that time, there were those 544 seafarers

0:06:35.383,0:06:37.048
being held hostage,

0:06:37.048,0:06:38.827
and some of them were held hostage for years

0:06:38.827,0:06:41.399
because of the nature of shipping[br]and the flag of convenience.

0:06:41.399,0:06:43.267
Not all of them, but some of them were,

0:06:43.267,0:06:48.272
because for the minority[br]of unscrupulous ship owners,

0:06:48.272,0:06:50.509
it can be easy to hide behind

0:06:50.509,0:06:55.723
the anonymity offered by some flags of convenience.

0:06:55.723,0:06:59.724
What else does our sea blindness mask?

0:06:59.724,0:07:01.966
Well, if you go out to sea on a ship

0:07:01.966,0:07:04.030
or on a cruise ship, and look up to the funnel,

0:07:04.030,0:07:06.783
you'll see very black smoke.

0:07:06.783,0:07:08.596
And that's because shipping

0:07:08.596,0:07:11.998
has very tight margins,[br]and they want cheap fuel,

0:07:11.998,0:07:14.139
so they use something called bunker fuel,

0:07:14.139,0:07:16.716
which was described to me[br]by someone in the tanker industry

0:07:16.716,0:07:18.835
as the dregs of the refinery,

0:07:18.835,0:07:22.139
or just one step up from asphalt.

0:07:22.139,0:07:25.459
And shipping is the greenest method of transport.

0:07:25.459,0:07:27.755
In terms of carbon emissions per ton per mile,

0:07:27.755,0:07:30.726
it emits about a thousandth of aviation

0:07:30.726,0:07:32.995
and about a tenth of trucking.

0:07:32.995,0:07:36.037
But it's not benign, because there's so much of it.

0:07:36.037,0:07:38.731
So shipping emissions are[br]about three to four percent,

0:07:38.731,0:07:40.906
almost the same as aviation's.

0:07:40.906,0:07:42.603
And if you put shipping emissions

0:07:42.603,0:07:45.705
on a list of the countries' carbon emissions,

0:07:45.705,0:07:47.459
it would come in about sixth,

0:07:47.459,0:07:49.355
somewhere near Germany.

0:07:49.355,0:07:52.943
It was calculated in 2009 that the 15 largest ships

0:07:52.943,0:07:55.984
pollute in terms of particles and soot

0:07:55.984,0:07:57.646
and noxious gases

0:07:57.646,0:08:00.010
as much as all the cars in the world.

0:08:00.010,0:08:01.654
And the good news is that

0:08:01.654,0:08:03.711
people are now talking about sustainable shipping.

0:08:03.711,0:08:06.228
There are interesting initiatives going on.

0:08:06.228,0:08:08.406
But why has it taken so long?

0:08:08.406,0:08:10.246
When are we going to start talking and thinking

0:08:10.246,0:08:15.068
about shipping miles as well as air miles?

0:08:15.068,0:08:17.394
I also traveled to Cape Cod to look

0:08:17.394,0:08:21.475
at the plight of the North Atlantic right whale,

0:08:21.475,0:08:23.601
because this to me was one[br]of the most surprising things

0:08:23.601,0:08:25.604
about my time at sea,

0:08:25.604,0:08:27.554
and what it made me think about.

0:08:27.554,0:08:30.383
We know about man's impact on the ocean

0:08:30.383,0:08:33.097
in terms of fishing and over-fishing,

0:08:33.097,0:08:35.084
but we don't really know about what's happening

0:08:35.084,0:08:37.090
underneath the water.

0:08:37.090,0:08:39.458
And in fact, shipping has a role to play here,

0:08:39.458,0:08:43.035
because shipping noise has contributed

0:08:43.035,0:08:46.497
to damaging the acoustic[br]habitats of ocean creatures.

0:08:46.497,0:08:49.228
Light doesn't penetrate beneath[br]the surface of the water,

0:08:49.228,0:08:51.793
so ocean creatures like whales and dolphins

0:08:51.793,0:08:54.128
and even 800 species of fish

0:08:54.128,0:08:57.203
communicate by sound.

0:08:57.203,0:08:58.947
And a North Atlantic right whale

0:08:58.947,0:09:02.004
can transmit across hundreds of miles.

0:09:02.004,0:09:03.947
A humpback can transmit a sound

0:09:03.947,0:09:05.978
across a whole ocean.

0:09:05.978,0:09:07.979
But a supertanker can also be heard

0:09:07.979,0:09:10.128
coming across a whole ocean,

0:09:10.128,0:09:12.675
and because the noise that[br]propellers make underwater

0:09:12.675,0:09:15.843
is sometimes at the same frequency that whales use,

0:09:15.843,0:09:18.755
then it can damage their acoustic habitat,

0:09:18.755,0:09:20.675
and they need this for breeding,

0:09:20.675,0:09:22.419
for finding feeding grounds,

0:09:22.419,0:09:24.711
for finding mates.

0:09:24.711,0:09:27.629
And the acoustic habitat of the[br]North Atlantic right whale

0:09:27.629,0:09:31.117
has been reduced by up to 90 percent.

0:09:31.117,0:09:33.699
But there are no laws governing acoustic pollution

0:09:33.699,0:09:35.699
yet.

0:09:35.699,0:09:39.051
And when I arrived in Singapore,

0:09:39.051,0:09:40.905
and I apologize for this, but I didn't want

0:09:40.905,0:09:43.892
to get off my ship.

0:09:43.892,0:09:46.851
I'd really loved being on board Kendal.

0:09:46.851,0:09:48.715
I'd been well-treated by the crew,

0:09:48.715,0:09:51.995
I'd had a garrulous and entertaining captain,

0:09:51.995,0:09:56.039
and I would happily have signed up[br]for another five weeks,

0:09:56.039,0:09:57.960
something that the captain also said

0:09:57.960,0:10:00.263
I was crazy to think about.

0:10:00.263,0:10:02.615
But I wasn't there for nine months at a time

0:10:02.615,0:10:04.739
like the Filipino seafarers,

0:10:04.739,0:10:06.655
who, when I asked them to describe their job to me,

0:10:06.655,0:10:09.207
called it dollar for homesickness.

0:10:09.207,0:10:10.887
They had good salaries,

0:10:10.887,0:10:13.655
but theirs is still an isolating and difficult life

0:10:13.655,0:10:17.329
in a dangerous and often difficult element.

0:10:17.329,0:10:19.399
But when I get to this part, I'm in two minds,

0:10:19.399,0:10:22.355
because I want to salute those seafarers

0:10:22.355,0:10:24.542
who bring us 90 percent of everything

0:10:24.542,0:10:28.177
and get very little thanks or recognition for it.

0:10:28.177,0:10:31.005
I want to salute the hundred thousand ships

0:10:31.005,0:10:33.070
that are at sea

0:10:33.070,0:10:34.863
that are doing that work, coming in and out

0:10:34.863,0:10:37.999
every day, bringing us what we need.

0:10:37.999,0:10:41.045
But I also want to see shipping,

0:10:41.045,0:10:44.099
and us the general public,[br]who knows so little about it,

0:10:44.099,0:10:46.738
to have a bit more scrutiny,

0:10:46.738,0:10:48.595
to be a bit more transparent,

0:10:48.595,0:10:51.976
to have 90 percent transparency.

0:10:51.976,0:10:54.691
Because I think we could all benefit

0:10:54.691,0:10:56.996
from doing something very simple,

0:10:56.996,0:11:00.171
which is learning to see the sea.

0:11:00.171,0:11:02.344
Thank you.

0:11:02.344,0:11:06.344
(Applause)