Nearly a thousand people climbed the world's highest mountain, Everest, last year. Humans know the limits and secrets of our environment, of what we see, very well, and even the most inaccessible point has become a tourist attraction. But on planet Earth there are still many things we don't see, practically unreachable places. Everest is two kilometers shorter than the deepest point in the oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Pacific, an immense well that is almost 11,000 meters deep. There are still many secrets to discover.

The wind on your face. Dry skin. Salt on your lips. The furious water breaking at the bow. Playful dolphins surfing the waves. A large whale waving goodbye as the Sun hides beyond the horizon, where the water and the sky become indivisible. Moving forward at full speed in the middle of nowhere. The immense ocean. Seafarers always talk about the feeling of freedom that sailing entails. But ships are also a prison in motion. Working in the merchant navy is hard. Months away from home. The same faces day and night. Practically, without getting off the ship for a long time.Joel is a 40-year-old Filipino sailor. He has been working in the merchant navy for 19 years. He has learned to live with the solitude and absence of his daughter Casidy, who will soon turn 8. In January, he left home to embark on a new voyage aboard the Seadrive, a 130-meter-long merchant ship flying the Maltese flag with a crew of 24, all Filipino. He has not been able to see his daughter again until this August. Almost eight months apart. A few years ago, when his father died, he asked to return home to be with his family and share their grief. They did not let him. "It was not convenient for the company," he confesses with a serious face. He accepted it resignedly. "Filipinos have too good a character," summarizes Pep Costa, a merchant captain who now works at the Port of Barcelona and lives on a 15-meter-long boat in the port of Garraf. Francesc Lleal was also a merchant captain. He is now 80 years old and lives in a house in Badalona. From the terrace, he contemplates the timid waves that die gently on the beach, nothing like the violent storms he endured when he was at the helm. In his house, wherever you look, everything is a maritime reference. The dining room is presided over by a painting of the steamship Apolo, a ship that disappeared in the Atlantic returning from Cuba in 1885. Two of his great-grandfather's brothers drowned in the ocean. "I was destined for the sea, my father was a merchant marine captain. At 5 or 6 years old, at school, they called me the sailor," he explains. As a child, he and his six siblings went a year and a half without seeing their father, who was stationed in Equatorial Guinea. As an adult, he was the one who was absent. Eighteen months away, uninterrupted.Seamen

Lleal, Costa or Joel are some of the millions of men who live or have lived from the sea. Today there are more than 2.5 million merchant sailors. Almost 60% come from the Philippines, India, China, Russia and Indonesia. For citizens of these countries, working in the navy means guaranteeing a future. Joel decided to become an officer because he had to help his family and doing electronic engineering, which was his dream, meant one more year of studies. "For them, working eight or nine months means being able to afford a house. That's why they end up going through the motions and accepting many things. If they endure, their children will be able to study," explains Costa.This is the case of Bhabik Tandel and Haraganga Mallik, two Indian sailors who call in at Barcelona on the last Tuesday in June. It's a good trade. They earn a good living. Like Lena Rose, a 35-year-old Filipino cook who lands in the Catalan capital with the container ship Mercury, coming from Valencia. The next morning it's time to leave for Casablanca and then, sea and more sea until Israel, Egypt, and Turkey. "I'll be away from home for nine months, I've only been away for one now, so I have eight left," she explains. Lena works 12-hour shifts, preparing different salads and desserts for her colleagues every day. When she's not working, she spends her day on her mobile or watching a movie in her cabin to "relax". The worst thing about her job is the rocking, as they have to secure everything – plates, chairs, pots and pans... – so they don't shatter into a thousand pieces. That, and the loneliness and monotony. "The ship is like a prison; if you want to get out, you can't. When you're in bed, in your cabin, you keep telling yourself 'I'm alone'," she confesses.Lena Rose is part of a group of 7 Filipinos. While she is talking to the journalist, the rest are waiting for her, playing billiards at Stella Maris, an international Catholic organization that assists sailors in many ports. A few minutes later, another group of Chinese arrives to exchange dollars and visit the city. They have a few hours. They travel under the Hong Kong flag and have an Indian crew member on board. They are the third group to pass through the building that Stella Maris has in the shipyards of Barcelona. Joel and three friends were the first. The last time they had been in the Catalan capital, they had visited "la Sagrada", as they call the Sagrada Familia, and now they are asking Ricard for advice on visiting the Gothic Quarter. Ricard Rodríguez-Martos is the alma mater of the organization. He welcomes sailors – they have 32 beds at a very affordable price – and helps them during their brief stay in Barcelona, although sometimes he has seen some abandoned sailor spend months living in the modest building. He himself was a naval officer for a few years. "It's a very nice job, but it left my daughter and wife alone, with the second daughter I quit," he recalls. This is what happens to many sailors. When they want to start a family or have children, they look for alternatives closer to home. Living together many months

Ricard receives citizens from all over the world every day. He has seen it all from his small office, coordinating the van that brings the ship's crew to the Stella Maris premises. "Seafarers are needed; on board the ship, Russians and Ukrainians coexist," he argues."The most important thing is not navigation, but that people don't kill each other," points out Lleal. During the long voyages, all crammed into the cabin, there were topics that could not be discussed. Neither politics nor women. Too many hours together. Too many hours seeing the same faces. Both while working and during rest time. "Before we carried 3,000 tons and could spend weeks loading and unloading. Today we carry hundreds of thousands of tons and they are unloaded in hours. This means that the crew has practically no time to have a beer on Las Ramblas," he adds. Port stops are ephemeral. Furthermore, new ports, especially the larger ones, are infrastructures far from cities. From life. From human contact. And there isn't always a Ricard to welcome and guide them. "And fortunately, the campaigns are getting shorter and shorter. Before, they used to be 11 months at sea and one month of vacation. "This 11-1 is a translation of the mentality of working the land, but enduring 11 months on a ship is terrible because you don't have Saturdays or Sundays, there are no holidays. You work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with your watches and your shifts, and the rest environment is still the same workplace, which is the vessel," explains Víctor Jiménez, president of the council of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), who believes that there are "certain companies and crew profiles that assume" these conditions."They are miserable conditions," states Germán de Melo, president of the Spanish Merchant Navy Officers' College, without mincing words, who denounces the abuse of overtime hours there. "It is the first sector to be affected by globalization. Qualified labor is sought, but the salary, vacation, and condition requirements are not the same. For Europeans, it is no longer attractive to be on board; policies must be applied to promote the attractiveness of the profession in European Union countries," adds Jiménez.Sailors experience an isolation that affects their psychic stability. There end up being "many squabbles" and it's better to lock oneself away to "read or write" in the cabin, says Lleal, who during the 23 years he sailed around the world saw how crew members who had "gone mad", who couldn't take it anymore, had to disembark on land. "In the middle of the sea you go crazy", he recounts.When he was a merchant captain, Pep Costa learned that sailors always push the limits. Even if you have a calm disposition, you need to know how to be authoritative. But above all, you must earn the respect of your crew. They spend many months living together and, as he says, "on a ship everything works, but not everything at the same time." Therefore, there will be problems and everyone will need to row in the same direction. They have all seen and experienced fires, water leaks, rescues of shipwrecked people, or even collisions between ships in the fog of Newfoundland. That's why Costa used to take a walk around the ship every day and interact with the entire crew: "There is always someone who wants to tell you something and doesn't dare to bypass the chain of command."

]]>

The Ormuz crisis, through which more than 30% of global oil and liquefied gas exports circulate, has brought to the fore the difficult balances in the control of maritime transport, which until now seemed stable and controlled but which wars and the race of the great powers, especially the United States and China, to control maritime routes are calling into question. 80% of everything that surrounds us has traveled by sea, be it fuel, raw materials, food, or manufactured products. Despite this central and strategic role, maritime transport and, in general, everything that happens at sea – even in the scientific field – is a generally unknown world. On the high seas, the law of the sea prevails, but this is variable and always clashes with that of the countries where calls are made, with those who have armed the ships, with the owners of the ports, or, also, with those who militarily or strategically control the ocean. The dispersion is so great that sometimes isolated information does not allow one to realize the complexity of the whole.

]]>

"If sea transport stopped, half the population would die of hunger and the other half of cold." This is stated by Germán de Melo, president of the Spanish Merchant Navy Officers' Association. If we look around us, more than 80% of the things that surround us have traveled by ship across the oceans that cover 70% of our planet. "In reality, we should call Earth planet Sea," states merchant captain Francesc Lleal. The sea is still largely unknown, indispensable for the global economy to function.

]]>

The Spanish government has approved new adjustments for road, rail, and maritime transport to mitigate the effects of fuel costs due to the war in the Middle East. These measures are in addition to those already approved, and among them, the aid of up to 20 cents per liter of professional diesel stands out.

]]>

More sustainable port facilities. This is one of the objectives of the energy transition plan presented this Tuesday by the Port of Barcelona. This document, derived from the port's fourth strategic plan, aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 50% by 2030 compared to 2017 levels, "the equivalent of the annual emissions of 240,000 cars." Furthermore, it intends to reduce them by 85% by 2040 with the goal "of becoming a carbon-neutral port by 2050." Investments in infrastructure are projected at approximately €920 million from private funds and €780 million from public funds. The plan encompasses all the measures the Port of Barcelona is developing to "decarbonize port activity, guarantee the supply of sustainable energy, both environmentally and economically, and become a leading center for energy activities." In this document, the Port of Barcelona ceases to treat energy as a commodity, considering it "a strategic factor, key to strengthening the competitiveness of the port and the region in an increasingly demanding global market." Furthermore, it adds that this transformation "will consolidate the Port of Barcelona's leadership in both the maritime and port sector and the entire logistics chain, driving the energy transition far beyond the port area." This roadmap includes an action plan with more than 150 initiatives, grouped into four main areas: the decarbonization of port activity; the sustainability of energy consumption; resilience to guarantee energy supply; and innovation to facilitate the emergence of new business models and the adoption of emerging technologies. Electrification

It incorporates concrete measures to promote energy efficiency, aiming for 50% of port activity to be electrified by 2030 and for 65% of container ship and cruise ship gangways to be connected to Operational Power Systems (OPS), allowing them to shut down their engines while in port—a figure that will increase to 0%. Local energy production is also a focus, with the goal of having 100 megawatts (MWp) of photovoltaic energy installed by 2030 and exploring approaches that enable strategic management. Furthermore, the production of 100,000 tons of sustainable fuels annually is planned, including both biomethane and synthetic fuels. These fuels are a key element in the decarbonization of maritime transport, as the capacity to supply them allows for participation in maritime green corridors and attracts the most efficient and sustainable ships. "The energy transition plan shapes port planning for the coming years and will transform our energy model, generating new business areas. All actions taken and to be taken in the Port of Barcelona are designed and planned with the energy transition in mind. Sustainability already permeates the entire port business," stated the president of José.

]]>

For Carinsa, the Catalan company dedicated to creating, producing, distributing, and marketing flavorings for human food and beverages, animal feed, and fragrances for detergents and cosmetics, the problem isn't the tariffs imposed by the US, which is currently set at 10% instead of 20%. Furthermore, for this company, sales in the world's leading power don't even reach 5% of its total. But they are concerned about the effects this trade war may have in the medium rather than the short term.

]]>

After six days aground, the Ever Given, the huge 400-metre cargo ship weighing 220,000 tons stranded in the Suez Canal has been refloated early this morning, according to several reports, so that the circulation in this crucial route for maritime trade could be recovered soon. According to Reuters, the vessel has been freed, the engines have been started and final checks are being made before it can be manoeuvred. It is unclear when the ship will be able to move and resume traffic in the canal. Each day of blockage costs over €8bn.

]]>

The Suez Canal has temporarily suspended all traffic while it still tries to free the ship Ever Given which has been stranded in the middle of the canal for three days after losing power in the middle of a storm on Tuesday morning. Although the canal authorities were confident on Wednesday that they would be able to remove the ship and open the passage that same day, the ship remains aground and small tugboats are trying unsuccessfully to move it.

]]>