One reason the U.S. Merchant Marine is failing is that almost no one knows who we are or what we do.
To wit:
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-aircraft-version-of-the-US-Merchant-Marine
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I agree wholeheartedly and have said it for a while now. Also a reason, as I mentioned in another post, why certain interests feel at liberty to propagate outright lies about us. We’re unknown and therefore not needed. Coming from northern Europe, where seafaring still to this day is a highly venerable occupation, it is insane for me to see people being so obtuse in the US. At best it is connected to something military or maybe one of those bullshit crab catching shows on TV.
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Isn’t that a good thing? Otherwise everyone would want to be a mariner.
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Or not. . . .
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Why would it be bad if young people aspired to work at sea?
If nothing else it would motivate them to support the Jones Act,and study math and science.
Candidly I don’t really see a downside.
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Well, I was kidding. But in a serious answer to your question, I’m not sure there aren’t already more potential mariners than jobs afloat. We’ve shown that the academies turn out more thirds than the industry can absorb. I can’t speak to ABs and deckhands.
With more people interested, there would be more public support for our industry.
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thankfully i didn’t read any more of those questions you’d posted… it was hard enough to just look at it.
the way our maritime industry is going it’d take 50 or 100 million “interested” people to move the needle on maritime interest.