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Maritime English
Maritime English is the internationally recognised language of the sea. The exact specifications of Maritime English language were instigated over a number of years and were developed under the supervision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and adopted in 2001.

Maritime English has a central purpose of improving the communication between seafarers at sea, thus reducing the number of poor communication related accidents. Maritime English must be taught by trained professionals, usually within a Maritime Education and Training (MET) institution, which also provides other marine training for the merchant shipping sector.

The need for a common form of maritime English became evident to international organisations concerned with sea safety as a result of accidents relating to poor level of communication aboard merchant vessels. A set of Standard Marine Navigational Vocabulary (SMNV) phrases was complied, developed and adopted in 1977 by the IMO. However these were never a compulsory learning or teaching tools and had little long term success. By the early 1990’s safety at sea had attained a higher level of importance and the IMO recognised the need for a compressive safety language, which would cover all areas sea-related verbal communications. After a long period of development, a set of Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) was adopted by the IMO in 2001.