You could honestly apply this statement to the entire maritime industry in general. Shriveled old men far past their prime dominate huge sections of the maritime industry, hell the captain on my last ship was so fat he couldn’t even climb the stars to the bridge and had to use an elevator just to get down to the galley.
Logically it would have been far smarter when international trade took a nose-dive at the start of the pandemic to downsize the maritime industry so that when the re-opening began you could fill the vacated positions with fresh, young mariners, far more suited to the rigors of sea life. But instead we waste millions and hundreds of man hours compensating for the declining health of mariner population.
Not that anything can really be done about it since those same old men occupy nearly 90% of all the authority positions in the industry. Case in point, on that same ship I was on, only around a quarter of the entire crew were old enough to be considered in the danger bracket for COVID. None of them should have even been on that ship in the first place during the pandemic. But they just don’t retire.
Tbh this is kinda like a microcosm for our entire society.