The third sea voyage to examine the crew members was carried out by four ZfAM doctors and one IVDP student. It took place from 07.09.2018 - 15.09.2018 on a bulk carrier of the Roth shipping company. The ship's route led from Porto Marghera (Venice) to Taranto in southern Italy.
Due to the signing off of 8 seafarers (including captain) out of a total of 18 crew members, which was approximately 45 % of the crew, after a laytime of 4 days at the port of Porto Marghera, the team worked at full speed and ultimately successfully to obtain as much data as possible from all seafarers at the end of their long time on board. Since the on-signers, including the new captain, could also be won over 100 % for the study participation, this concluded the examination phase (WP 3).
The working conditions on board differed considerably from those on the two container ships that had previously been studied, and not only because of the crew change. The relevance of the project decision to explore different ship types to complete the picture is also underlined by the observation, even before the data analysis was completed, that the phases of workload on board are very different. For example, the complete cleaning of the large holds after transporting "pig iron"to Porto Marghera and a subsequent repainting was extremely challenging the crew on deck.
As a result of this and long lay times at the port (for safety reasons the team was not allowed to stay on the working and unloading decks), data collection also differed. While 100% of the seafarers could be acquired for key questionnaires and blood tests, the number of pupillometries and polysomnographies was lower. The motion tracker could not be used. On the third voyage, at least two 24h-recalls could be carried out by 16 seafarers. The additional questionnaires on nutrition were answered by the majority of the test persons (22-25 seafarers).
21.09.2018
