Seafarers and their families make high-stakes decisions on the basis of what we publish — whether to sign a contract, where to call for help, which certificate to renew. This page sets out how we work so you can judge our content fairly.
What we publish
Four broad categories, with different bars for inclusion:
Official guidance.Convention text (MLC, STCW, SOLAS, MARPOL, ISM, ISPS), IMO and ILO publications, and primary statements from flag-state administrations, port-state-control MoUs, ITF, ISWAN, P&I clubs, and class societies. We cite the source directly and link to the canonical document.
Industry reference.Reputable maritime press (Splash247, Marine Insight, Lloyd's List, Seatrade, gCaptain, Maritime Executive, Hellenic Shipping News), training-provider material, and union publications. Used to triangulate official guidance, never as the sole source for a regulatory claim.
User-submitted reports. Forum posts and correction submissions. Treated as leads, not facts. Sensitive claims (about specific companies, agencies, or ports) are not published until verified, and clearly labelled when included.
Estimates. Salary ranges, port-call costs, training fees. These vary continuously by employer, CBA, contract, market, and currency. We publish ranges with a confidence level and the source they came from — never a single number with no caveat.
When pages are reviewed
High-stakes pages (rights, help, abandonment, unpaid wages, repatriation, STCW certification, manning-agency due diligence) are reviewed at least every 6 months and after any relevant amendment to MLC or STCW.
Regulatory reference pages (SOLAS, MARPOL, ISM, ISPS, etc.) are reviewed annually and tagged with the convention edition date.
Directory pages (ports, companies, ships, flag states, certifications, training centres, manning agencies) carry a last verified stamp per record. Stale rows are surfaced for re-verification.
News is auto-refreshed every 4 hours from eight maritime RSS feeds. We do not edit news headlines.
Salary, certification, wage, and welfare claims
Salaries. Published as ranges (low / median / high), with year, vessel-type bucket, and confidence level (high / medium / low / stale). Methodology on /salaries/methodology.
Certifications. We describe the international STCW minimum. Final requirements rest with the issuing flag-state administration and the employer. We always tell users to verify with both before booking training or signing a contract.
Wage entitlement and unpaid wages. We cite MLC A2.2 and A2.5.2, the IMO/ILO Joint Database, and ITF practice. We are not a law firm. For a specific dispute, escalate to your union, ISWAN, the ITF inspector at the nearest port, or a maritime lawyer.
Welfare. We publish helpline numbers from organisations that have published them publicly. We do not stand between a seafarer and ISWAN, the ITF, or the Mission to Seafarers — we route you to them.
Companies, ports, ships, agencies
Inclusion in a directory is not an endorsement. We list entities on the basis of publicly available data (IMO records, flag-state registries, ITF lists, training-provider directories, port authority publications). We do not accept payment for inclusion or for position. Where users report concerns about a specific entity, we record the concern, leave the underlying entry intact, and let the reader judge. We do not publish defamatory or unverified criminal allegations against named entities.
Conflicts of interest
Seafarer Index has no paid advertisements, no affiliate links, and no sponsored content. The site is funded out of pocket by the operator. Open-source stack, open-data datasets under CC BY 4.0, see /about.
Corrections and complaints
Every detail page carries a report a correction link. We log each report, investigate, update the source-of-truth record, and re-publish. For complaints about a specific page, see /corrections. For complaints about a company or agency, see how to verify a maritime job.
When to ignore us
If a fact on this site contradicts your flag-state administration, your employer's instructions, your union, your CBA, your port-state inspector, the Master of your vessel, or a qualified lawyer or doctor — follow them, not us. We aim to be useful enough to compete with subscription databases, but we are not the issuing authority for anything.