James Griffiths - Guest blog

Welcome to our latest guest blog where we’ve been chatting to James Griffiths, General Manager of Ocean Operations for Scenic Group and finding out more about what happens behind the scenes in order to keep a fleet of luxury expedition ships running.

Here’s what James told us…

As General Manager of Ocean Operations, I’m responsible for the operations of our fleet which includes four ships in service with around 850 colleagues. I currently live in Mumbles, near Swansea in the UK, but due to the nature of my work I spend a significant amount of time living in Croatia. 

Prior to this role, I spent many years working at sea and worked up through the ranks to Captain and over the last 15 years, my main focus has been on polar expedition travel. I hold a master mariner certificate of competency in addition to a degree in engineering and a post graduate diploma in law.

Part of my job is to work with our medical service provider (Red Square Medical) to ensure that our ships are offering medical services that are appropriate for their deployment, and this can often be to some of the most extreme and remote locations around the world. It’s extremely varied, though during the COVID-19 pandemic, I came ashore when our operations paused for a significant period of time.

I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to lead the restart of our Ocean Operations, which included setting up everything from a company to manage the ships, to selecting our crewing, medical, helicopter and submarine partners and providers, amongst many other things. Our areas of operation, and the nature of our cruises (expedition), plus having aircraft and submersibles onboard some, do mean additional elements involved in the management of these ships.

You could say that this current position is more of a happy coincidence than one that I actually planned for! In some ways this is a great positive - I do think it’s possible to plan a little too much and then be disappointed if things don’t go quite the way you had imagined. But there’s no danger of that here!

From a marine perspective my main additional area of expertise is in the polar regions. When I started working in Antarctica there were no additional certification or training requirements, but since the adoption of the Polar Code for ships operating in polar regions in 2009, this has changed significantly. 

Of course, no two days are the same in this job! I am fortunate to travel often and have a very diverse workload to deal with. I may wake up to a medical evacuation from a ship and will spend hours working with our various partners to ensure that everything is put in place to support what can be some quite serious medical cases. Once that’s resolved I could be attending meetings about decarbonization, then on to interviews, or working on budgets. It’s incredibly varied and by necessity has to be highly responsive to what’s happening onboard the ships.

My role in medical emergencies is often looking at the logistics and dealing with what needs to happen once the real emergency is over. Challenges such as how do you get a patient with a brain injury safely out of Antarctica? Well, the answer is that you have to charter a private jet to fly to Argentina from a gravel runway in the South Shetland Islands, then find a hospital that you can work with. Next you need to arrange onward medical evacuation or repatriation home, plus follow up care in the country that the patient is from. 

Due to the remote locations that we operate in, and the specialist itineraries we offer, finding the right hospitals and medical care immediately can be harder than you think, even in so-called developed countries. Making good progress to help in a ship in poor weather conditions can be slower than you’d like at best.  Likewise, travel plans may not be straightforward - often involving medical and non-medical escorts across multiple flights and countries. 

I have quite an intense dislike of processes that are needlessly complicated but unfortunately, and I suppose inevitably, it is almost impossible to avoid them entirely in any job. But I’m a seafarer at heart – when I worked at sea I was often frustrated with ‘the office’ on land. Consequently, my main goal is to try and run a company that I would want to work for if I was at sea. As such, the best parts of my job are those which have a positive impact on our ships – seeing our fantastic people getting promoted or finding solutions to problems. Seafarers are incredibly resilient and resourceful, and it is really a pleasure to work with so many passionate people.

Part of my role is working with our medical services company to decide what equipment and kit we should carry on our vessels – we recently agreed that adding an ultrasound would be very beneficial and this project, with the associated training, is already well underway. This gives our medical teams an additional level of diagnostics that could be extremely valuable.

I was once in charge of a medical centre on a small cruise ship during a repositioning voyage with around 80 crew. In theory I was allowed to do this with the medical qualifications I held. But when people turned up with real medical issues, I was genuinely baffled as to what to do. So if you ask me what the most useful piece of reference material would be, the answer would have to be a telephone!

In terms of my favourite bit of kit, it’s a moot point as I generally never go on a ship without a Doctor, Nurse and fully stocked medical facility! It’s also great to know that this medical support is what’s available to our passengers and crew too.

It might surprise you to hear that the maritime sector is almost criminally underrepresented in the UK – when I left school to join the navy at 16 everyone thought that I had gone insane. But I can’t say I regret it at all – it certainly beats waiting until I retire to see the world. So my advice would be to at least consider one of the many roles at sea and offshore that are available now.

I still try to go to sea whenever possible and often attend simulator sessions that are arranged for our bridge teams. But the reality is that the only way to stay really current is to actually be doing the job you trained for, so skills from that era are fading now and being replaced with new challenges. It’s hard to say what I might do next as my current role is constantly evolving and developing. I still have a lot that I would like to achieve within my current sphere.

The job can be stressful with long hours and significant out of hours work. I find that the only way to really clear my head is to do something that requires my full attention – I used to be quite a good pianist and still enjoy playing from time to time.

Finally, the best piece of advice that I’ve ever been given… 

Before you criticise someone, walk a mile in their shoes - that way when you criticise them, you’re a mile away, and you have their shoes!