Cruise line companies might be in financial dire straits, but their captains are coining it in.
The average salary for a cruise liner captain jumped 22.8 per cent last year to $153,379 with wage rates for master mariners aboard less glamorous bulk carriers and container ships receiving a 16 per cent boost to $110,981.

Chief officers aboard cargo ships did even better than their captains in terms of pay rises, logging a 27.5 per cent increase to $82,737 a year.

"Even though the shipping industry is being buffeted by poor vessel earnings, rising costs and ever more stringent regulations, salaries continue to rise," said Mark Charman, chief executive of the Fastream Group, the UK-based specialist maritime recruiter which carried out the salary survey.
"The sector suffers from a skill shortage and the pool of highly qualified people continues to shrink. This is both the legacy of a lack of training in the 1980s during the previous downturn and the often perceived low status of jobs in the shipping industry. Companies recognise that good people are not necessarily readily available and need to be retained and properly incentivised."

The survey, carried out in 2011, was based on the responses of 4000 shipping professionals working in all the main shipping centers as well as seafaring officers worldwide. It showed the most pressing skills shortage is among second engineers with five years experience and, "it is those candidates in particular who are receiving the top salaries."

In other maritime sectors, the survey shows that captain's working in the offshore industry are also earning a healthy $128,247 on average, although their increase has been a more modest 7 per cent.
However, the salaries of captains on tankers nudged up only 2.6 per cent to $115,613. Even so, they continued to earning more than their dry cargo peers.

The survey concluded that the upward trend looks set to continue this year. However, it said not all seafarers had experienced significant above-inflation pay rises.
While 50 per cent of salaries at sea have increased by at least 5 per cent, some 30 per cent of seafarers said they had seen a decrease, with the brunt of those pay cuts falling on those in less senior positions.
Far fewer of their shore-based counterparts have suffered similar salary cuts. Some 10 per cent ashore have seen their earnings fall, while 56 per cent have enjoyed rises upwards of 5 per cent.
Ocean-going salaries however, do not compare to the specialist rates earned by some inshore marine pilots.

On the Panama Canal, for example, senior pilots, can make up to $450,000 per year, including overtime, or working "voluntary shifts" above and beyond the normal five-weeks-on/three-weeks-off schedule.
San Francisco Bay and the lower Mississippi River are other examples of heavily trafficked waterways where small pilot bodies enjoy a statutory monopoly on all work. Last year, members of the San Francisco Bar Pilots reportedly received an average net income of $451,336.

Sorce: www.thenational.ae