Christine Duffy, president and CEO of Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), said CLIA would call on the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations agency that mandates global passenger shipping standards, to implement a comprehensive evaluation from the findings of the Costa Concordia investigation so that the cruise industry remains one of the safest recreational industries globally.

“While there is still a great deal not yet known about this incident, all of our members recognize the seriousness of these events and want to ensure that we apply the lessons learned from this tragic event,” Duffy said.

Duffy spoke from London at a televised press conference being held during the Passenger Shipping Safety Conference, a previously scheduled event that began shortly after the Concordia sinking. She moderated a panel of cruise safety experts, including Richard Evenhand, managing director of V.Ships Leisure Ltd., a leading third party ship manager; Sir Alan Massey, chief executive of the U.K.’s Maritime and Coast Guard Agency; and Capt. William Wright, senior vice president of marine safety at Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. and a past master of Oasis of the Seas; and Dr. Tom Allen, a leading maritime safety expert.

Duffy said she spoke on behalf of the entire cruise industry in expressing heartfelt condolences to all those affected by the terrible tragedy of the Costa Concordia. “We want to pay tribute to all those who worked tirelessly to evacuate the ship and care for the injured,” she said. “But we don’t want to speculate on the causes of the incident.”

The main goal of the press conference was to illustrate how the cruise industry is regulated and answer any questions raised about cruise ship safety. “Safety is the cruise industry’s number one priority,” Duffy said. “The industry works constantly with the IMO, other maritime authorities and classification societies to implement stringent safety standards and will continue to do so.”

In answer to a question about the timing of the safety drill onboard the Concordia, which had not yet happened when the ship went down as per standards which mandate a drill within 24 hours of leaving the port, Wright said that for the vast majority of departures, the passenger safety drill occurs prior to leaving the dock. For those that don’t observe this standard, “I think that’s a practice that will come under scrutiny in the weeks and months to come,” Wright said.

In answer to a question about Concordia’s challenge in launching lifeboats as the ship was listing heavily, Allen said current regulations require that ships be able to launch lifeboats in conditions where a ship lists up to 20 degrees, but not beyond that. He said it was up to the master to determine if lifeboats could be launched if the ship were listing more than that. Concordia was listing much more than 20 degrees.

Allen also noted that new requirements for ships built after 2009 mandate a “safe return to port” initiative, which means ships make every effort to return to port before launching their lifeboats. Various systems installed in newer vessels focus on them having sufficient redundancies to cater to emergencies so they can remain afloat, Allen said. 

All of the panelists, including Allen, said they would dispute the notion that size makes any difference in terms of ship safety. “Because they are bigger [means] they can include other safety initiatives,” Allen said. “Stability standards are no different from other ships. … With larger ships you have a better platform to organize evacuations and ensure safety. One ship isn’t more unsafe than another.”

Wright said regulations demand that evacuations take place within a finite period of time. “As ships got larger…they were scaled according to the increased size of the vessel,” he said, saying that he didn’t see how the size of ships jeopardized their evacuation.

In answer to a question about whether some kind of additional review of ship captains is necessary, Wright said the industry is already highly regulated, with stringent requirements for a future mariner progressing to be a master of a ship of any size. After a four-year university level education, “you have to go through a long process of working your way up through the ranks,” Wright said. “You’ve already been all the way up the ladder starting with the lowest position and working your way up the ranks. It’s a long and tedious process before you find yourself in comment of any ship.”

Panelists also reiterated that every ship mandates its crew have the ability to speak the language of the ship they are operating, with most ships having English as the official language. That came in response to questions about whether Concordia’s crew could effectively explain evacuation procedures to the ship’s passengers.

The panel experts also said as far as regulations are concerned, the voyage plan is usually agreed upon beforehand, but if there’s a change by the ship’s master, that’s within his control. “Bridge management mandates not only do you follow your voyage plan, but if you change, it’s a two-person check to see if it’s appropriate,” Wright said.

The panel also sought to clarify that regulations do not mandate that a captain go down with his ship. “There’s no basis on international law that a captain goes down with the ship,” Allen said. “In many cases that may not be the appropriate action to take … there’s more myth than reality applied to that notion.”

What is clear is that it may take a time before international maritime organizations adopt regulations to avoid many of the incidents that reportedly took place on the Concordia. Panel experts said the Italian authorities first had to complete their investigation. Then the findings of that probe would be communicated to the IMO, which would discuss which regulations to change before implementing them. In the short term, individual cruise lines will be tasked with adopting best practices to avoid some of the things that happened onboard Concordia.

Speaking at a press conference in New York immediately after the televised panel, Michael Crye, CLIA’s executive vice president of technical and regulatory affairs, pointed out that Concordia was a ship “uniquely and almost solely of Italian identity,  one that was flagged in Italy and built in Italy to their standards. He said the Safety of Life at Sea pact, however, is an international treaty that applies throughout the world, so a ship staffed by an Italian crew should operate to same standards globally. “This process will be taken to IMO where it will be debated and discussed among international experts to look to see if SOLAS needs to be modified to accommodate any recommendations that come from the investigation,” Crye said.

He also pointed out another statistic that from 2005-2011 the cruise passenger shipping industry carried near 100 million passengers, but only suffered 16 deaths due to marine casualties during that period of time. “Obviously this particular incident will change those numbers significantly,” he said. But the cruise industry will “apply any lessons learned to ensure our safety record” going forward.