Partner Spotlight: Bigyellowfish — From Crew Wellbeing to Behaviour-Led Safety

Life at sea presents unique pressures — long contracts, demanding workloads, isolation, and complex operational environments. These factors can directly influence crew wellbeing, decision-making, and ultimately safety performance onboard vessels.

Recognising this connection, Bigyellowfish works with shipowners and managers to help address these challenges by strengthening crew wellbeing, engagement, and behavioural safety across the vessel ecosystem.

As part of RightShip’s Zero Harm Innovation Partners Program, Bigyellowfish is contributing to the industry’s shared ambition of safer, more resilient operations by helping organisations better understand and support the human factors that underpin safety performance at sea.

From Crew Wellbeing to Behaviour-Led Safety

Originally introduced as a wellbeing-focused platform for seafarers, Bigyellowfish has evolved into a broader workforce engagement and safety solution that supports frontline maritime teams as well as shore-based departments such as HSEQ, training, crewing, operations, and HR.

This evolution reflects a growing understanding across the maritime industry: achieving Zero Harm requires more than strong procedures and compliance frameworks. It requires visibility into behavioural risks, better communication between ship and shore, and the ability to translate safety expectations into practical actions onboard vessels.

By helping organisations gain earlier insight into crew wellbeing, engagement, and behavioural indicators, Bigyellowfish supports more proactive safety management and enables organisations to act before issues escalate.

Bridging the “Last Mile” of Safety Management

Many maritime operators have robust safety management systems in place. Yet one of the most persistent challenges lies in translating policies and procedures into consistent behaviours in everyday operations.

Bigyellowfish focuses on bridging this “last mile” gap by integrating wellbeing, communication, and task support into the daily working environment of seafarers. Through its platform, crews have access to tools that support personal resilience, social engagement, and the effective completion of operational tasks.

The platform brings together three key elements: holistic wellbeing, collaboration and engagement, and reinforced learning and task support. Together, these components aim to strengthen communication between ship and shore, improve the sense of connection among crews, and embed learning directly into day-to-day work onboard vessels.

This approach reflects the broader Zero Harm philosophy — that improving safety outcomes requires addressing both operational systems and the people who operate within them.

Strengthening Communication and Safety Awareness

Clear and reliable communication is critical to safe maritime operations. One area where Bigyellowfish has delivered measurable value is through supporting maritime operators with targeted onboard safety campaigns that translate complex procedures into clear, crew-focused messages.

Through the platform’s communication system, critical safety information can be delivered consistently and at scale, reducing the risk of messages being diluted or lost across multiple layers of communication. Crews using the platform have reported stronger awareness and more efficient compliance with safety and sustainability requirements as a result.

By ensuring that important operational messages reach crews clearly and reliably, this approach helps reinforce safe behaviours and strengthen alignment between shipboard teams and shore-based management.

Supporting Safer Operations Across Global Fleets

Today, Bigyellowfish’s platform is used across more than 2,000 vessels and 26 maritime companies, reflecting growing industry interest in solutions that address the human dimension of safety and operational performance

Feedback from the maritime community has highlighted increasing recognition that wellbeing, engagement, and behavioural insight play an important role in strengthening safety outcomes. Collaboration through the Zero Harm Innovation Partners Program has also helped build greater awareness of the social dimension of ESG, particularly the importance of supporting seafarer wellbeing as part of responsible fleet operations.

This growing focus reflects a wider shift across the industry toward integrating human factors more deeply into safety and sustainability strategies.

Looking Ahead: Human Performance and the Future of Maritime Safety

Several trends are shaping the future of maritime safety and the industry’s journey toward Zero Harm.

One is the growing emphasis on behaviour-led safety, where organisations move beyond compliance checklists to better understand how crews make decisions under pressure and how leadership and communication influence safety outcomes.

Another is the recognition that sustainability goals increasingly depend on human capability. As vessels adopt new energy technologies and operational practices, crews must be equipped with the knowledge, confidence, and support to manage these changes safely.

Finally, digitalisation is evolving from simple data collection toward practical decision-support tools that surface early indicators of risk, fatigue, and safety culture without adding unnecessary administrative burden to crews.

By helping align behavioural insight, digital tools, and organisational learning, Bigyellowfish aims to support safer ships, stronger safety cultures, and more resilient maritime operations.

Through its participation in the RightShip Zero Harm Innovation Partners Program, Bigyellowfish continues to contribute to the shared industry goal of reducing harm at sea by strengthening the human foundations of maritime safety.

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If your innovation has the potential to redefine the maritime industry, we invite you to submit your application and become part of a global movement towards a safer, greener future.