Harassment onboard became a certificate item in January, and a cost line

The rule that came in quietly

IMO Resolution MSC.560(108) amended the STCW Code and entered into force on 1 January 2026. It adds a mandatory competence on preventing and responding to violence and harassment, including bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault, to the Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities element of basic safety training. It is the first time the Code has placed this subject inside basic safety instruction.

The practical effect is administrative and unglamorous. Entry-level seafarers completing basic safety training have to cover it, and training providers have rewritten their courses to match. Maritime Professional Training in Florida, for one, folded the requirement into its Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities course from 1 November 2025, ahead of the deadline. For a yacht, it becomes another line on the crew certification matrix that a port state inspector or a flag surveyor can ask to see.

What a captain says is actually happening

Writing on SuperyachtNews on 2 July 2026, in a piece drawn from The Superyacht Report, Captain Kelly Gordon argued that the industry systematically underestimates the problem. Her account is that documented incidents disproportionately affect women, that harassment is routinely reclassified as interpersonal conflict, and that junior crew do not report because they expect career consequences for doing so.

She points to the conditions that make a yacht different from an office. Isolation from any outside authority, a rigid chain of command, shared living space with no way to withdraw from a colleague, employment that depends on references from the person complained about, and a culture that normalises heavy drinking. None of those are fixed by a certificate.

The evidence base

Gordon cites the International Seafarers' Welfare and Assistance Network, which runs the Yacht Crew Help Line and reports increasing numbers of crew making contact about abuse, bullying, harassment, discrimination and violence. She also refers to work by Yachtie Minds Matter surveying psychological safety, burnout and wellbeing across the industry, and to the persistent gender imbalance noted by the International Maritime Organization and the Women's International Shipping and Trading Association.

None of these are trade bodies with an interest in overstating the case. The helpline numbers in particular are a measure of what crew are willing to raise with an outside party at a point when they have concluded that raising it aboard will not work.

Why it is the owner's problem

The first reason is money. Crew turnover is expensive at every level and ruinous at the senior end, where a departure takes institutional knowledge of the yacht's systems with it. A department that loses two interior crew mid-season costs the owner agency fees, flights, training time and a visible drop in service during the weeks he is actually aboard.

The second is exposure. Under maritime labour law the shipowner sits alongside the master as the responsible party, and complaint handling, records and onboard procedures are inspectable. An owner who has never asked what his yacht's complaints procedure looks like, or who signs it off, is relying on a captain's judgement in an area that now has a certified competence attached to it.

What to ask for

Three documents settle most of it. The crew certification matrix, showing that basic safety training on the crew list reflects the 2026 competence. The yacht's written procedure for raising a complaint, including a route that does not run through the person most likely to be complained about. And the record of what has been raised and how it was closed.

Gordon's argument, and the industry initiatives she names such as the Tuesday Captain's Chat run by Captains Liam Devlin and Scott Kidd, are about leadership habits that no regulation reaches. The STCW competence covers basic safety training for individual seafarers. It does not require the yacht to have a complaints procedure, and it does not audit whether the one she has is used.