As maritime CCTV mandates gain ground – from India’s directive to new requirements in Australia, Panama, and the U.S. – one thing is becoming clear: the status quo isn’t good enough. Regulators are signaling a sector-wide shift in expectations around transparency, safety, and accountability at sea.
The question is no longer whether vessels need monitoring systems, but what kind.
Mandates are a necessary step forward, driven by growing pressure around crew safety as well as operational and environmental compliance. But simply installing traditional CCTV, just to tick a compliance box, risks missing a far greater opportunity to raise the bar around safety and performance.
At first glance, installing CCTV seems simple. But many conventional systems are siloed, and reactive. They capture footage, but unless an incident forces a review, that footage often sits untouched. Hours of valuable data go unwatched, and with it, insights that could have improved training, corrected unsafe behaviors, or prevented accidents. That’s not proactive safety; it’s delayed response.
This is where the opportunity lies. And why now is the time to move beyond passive monitoring and adopt a smarter, more active approach to safety.
AI-powered CCTV transforms how shipboard operations are monitored and understood. These systems don’t just record, they detect. They don’t just store, they inform. Real-time alerts and intelligent tagging mean that potential risks are immediately flagged to both crew and shoreside teams, allowing action to be taken before things escalate, not after.
And the results speak for themselves. Across a 30-vessel fleet, ShipIn users have reported a 40% reduction in onboard incidents, saving $1.87 million per year due to fewer incidents and improved decision-making. Some operators have recorded 180-day streaks with zero reportable incidents. That’s not just compliance, it’s transformation.
A lot of operators are confident in their safety culture. But when AI systems are introduced, many are shocked by the volume of basic safety violations they hadn’t previously detected. Although, this doesn’t come as a huge surprise since it has been documented that 95% of all accidents involve a human error, 58% accidents root cause are influenced by human factors, and 38% are due to non-compliance with protocols. This realization can be a real eye-opener and highlights how the traditional way of doing things with near-miss reporting is tremendously outdated.
Crucially, this technology brings something else the industry urgently needs: shared visibility. By creating an impartial, transparent record of onboard activity, AI-powered platforms support safer, more confident working environments. In a climate of rising legal and reputational risk, seafarers must be protected by facts, not assumptions.
Too often, crew members shoulder the blame when things go wrong, without access to the evidence that could clear their name. Take cargo contamination. When disputes arise, it’s not uncommon for crews to face allegations even when the issue originated before loading. With AI-enabled monitoring, video logs can provide proof of timing and actions, protecting crews from unjust liability.
The same applies to false allegations of smuggling, MARPOL violations, or bridge non-attendance. Systems like ShipIn’s FleetVision™ platform create a verifiable timeline of events, helping ensure that investigations are grounded in truth, not speculation. In this sense, visibility doesn’t just support safety, it supports fairness. That matters, because decriminalizing seafarers starts with evidence.
That same visibility is critical in high-risk zones like the bridge, engine room, or cargo holds – especially when it comes to enclosed spaces, which remain one of the most persistent and preventable causes of death at sea. In 2023 alone, 31 people lost their lives in enclosed space incidents, part of a rising trend that has claimed 310 lives since 1996, according to InterManager data. Many of these deaths occurred during routine tasks, in spaces that seemed safe, until they weren’t. In these environments, real-time oversight can mean the difference between life and death. That’s why some crews have gone a step further, using the spare cameras provided by ShipIn to monitor hard-to-access or infrequently visited areas of the ship, positioning the system as not just a compliance tool, but a practical extension of the team. For a profession already stretched thin, it’s another set of eyes, lightening the load and helping ensure no one steps into unseen danger.
It’s not just limited to safety. With environmental compliance under increasing scrutiny, AI systems can automatically track interactions with oily water separators, flag irregularities, and ensure proper MARPOL procedures, helping ships stay compliant and reducing the risk of fines or reputational fallout.
Other industries have already made this shift. Across aviation, manufacturing, and logistics, smart monitoring tools have become standard practice – not just to comply, but as core components of risk management and performance improvement. The same logic applies to shipping. With real-time alerts, intelligent dashboards, and predictive insights, the technology exists to modernize how maritime risk is managed, how crews are supported, and how decisions are made.
So yes, maritime CCTV mandates are about compliance. But they can be about so much more. They offer the rare chance to rethink how safety is handled onboard, not with more rules, but with better tools capable of delivering crew protection, real-time visibility, and higher safety standards across the board.
This is a moment of change, but it’s what we do with it that counts. Choose insight over hindsight, and we move from compliance to transformation. And most importantly, we make shipping safer, fairer, and fit for the future – for everyone on board.
Our CEO and Founder Osher Perry, recently sat down with Heather Ervin for Marine Log’s Listen Up! Podcast to discuss how AI-powered CCTV systems are becoming even more important for analyzing footage in real-time.
During the conversation, Osher explains how adding Shipin’s AI-powered CCTV platform isn’t about adding another layer of complexity for operators. It is there to filter out routine activity, surface only what matters, and enable ship-to-shore collaboration in real time. It’s not surveillance, it’s support.
Listen and find out more about how we are turning passive video into real-time insights on the Marine Log podcast.
ShipIn Systems has been shortlisted for the 2025 SAFETY4SEA Technology Award, which recognizes breakthrough contributions to maritime safety and innovation!
