SSI CEO, Ellie Besley-Gould Joins Panel Discussion:

From Reactive to Proactive — Is the Industry Ready to Make Wellbeing a Mandatory Competency?

The 2025 SEAFiT Index — drawn from over 21,000 seafarers across 1,703 ships — stands at 70.1%, down from 72.5% the year before, a decline that arrives not in a vacuum of inaction, but against a backdrop of growing industry investment in crew welfare programmes, digital mental health tools, and welfare partnerships. The industry is doing more. The numbers are getting worse. The interventions that exist are reaching the operators who least need them, while seafarers remain reluctant to disclose mental health concerns because those signed off for psychological reasons find the recruitment industry places significant obstacles in the way of their return to sea.

The session does not ask whether wellbeing matters. It asks why best practice has not become standard practice — and whether the answer is a lack of will, a lack of regulatory architecture, or a commercial structure that continues to externalise the cost of crew burnout onto the seafarers themselves.

FORMAT: Live Polling with Consequences — final vote shapes the CCG 2027 agenda

Audience votes not just to register opinion — but to restructure what happens next. Delegates have genuine agency, and the outcome reflects what the room needed, not what was scripted.