I went to Coastlink 2026 in Hull this month as Chair of the Society of Maritime Industries’ Digital Technology Group, and as a first-time attendee. Two years into maritime, with a digital and operations background, I came in genuinely curious about what short sea and coastal shipping looks like up close. I left with a different view of the sector than the one I walked in with.
That is what I want to write about. Not the agenda, which Mercator Media will publish in full. Something more honest. What did a first-timer actually take from two days in a room full of operators, ports, regulators, technologists, and academics talking openly about the future of short sea shipping?
A sector that has been quietly getting on with it
The headline from my notebook is simple. Short sea is one of the most under-told stories in maritime. The deep-sea, blue-water narrative tends to dominate the trade press, the policy debate, and the decarbonisation conversation. Coastlink is one of the few places where short sea sits in the centre of the room, not the margins.
And the people in that room are not waiting for permission. They are already getting on with port electrification, digital green corridors, AI-assisted port calls, smarter data capture in terminal operating systems, and harder conversations about skills and crew competence. The quality of the dialogue, the willingness to admit what is not working as well as what is, was a genuine eye-opener.
If you spend most of your time in deep sea, ship management, or technology vendor circles, you can miss this. Short sea is doing more than people give it credit for. That is the hidden gem.
Three things that stuck
I had the privilege of moderating Session 4, on AI, digitalisation and value from data, with David Trueman of TBA Group, Tim Morris of ARUP, and Karno Tenovuo of Awake.AI. Across that session and the rest of the conference, three things kept surfacing.
First, the centre of gravity on digitalisation has moved. The question is no longer “should we” or “how do we make the business case”. It is “how do we do this together, and with whom”. The appetite for collaboration across operators, ports, technology providers and regulators is noticeably higher than I would have expected coming in.
Second, the value of data is finally being talked about in operational language, not slideware language. What gets captured, where the friction is, how decisions actually change, what good looks like when the dashboard is turned off. That is a healthy shift, and one the DTG agenda will keep pushing on.
Third, the workforce conversation is catching up with the technology conversation, but only just. The honesty around skills, training, crew competence and the pace of change in onboard and shoreside roles was one of the most important threads of the two days. The technology is arriving faster than the workforce is being prepared for it, and the sector is starting to say so out loud.
Where SMI fits
Representing the DTG at Coastlink reminded me what SMI is uniquely positioned to do. Convene the right people, raise the collective voice of a sector that punches above its weight, and translate operator pain points into a policy and innovation agenda that the rest of the industry has to take seriously.
Short sea cannot afford to be a sub-plot in the UK maritime story. It is too central to coastal economies, to modal shift, to decarbonisation, and to the future of the workforce. Events like Coastlink, and forums like the DTG, are how that case gets made.
Thanks
A genuine thank you to Ellie Minshull and the Mercator Media team for the invitation, the organisation, and the quality of the programme. To Nick Lambert for chairing the conference. To ABP for hosting us so well in Hull. And to every speaker and delegate who made it the kind of event a first-timer leaves better informed and better connected than they arrived.
A first Coastlink well spent. The short sea story deserves more airtime, and forums like this are how it gets one.
