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UPDATE 1st July 2017 IMPORTANT UPDATE JULY 2017 - REMOVAL FROM SKILLED OCCUPATION LIST On the 1st July 2017 the occupations Ship's Master, Ship's Officer & Ship's Engineer were entirely removed from the Australian Skilled Occupation list. It is no longer possible to obtain a temporary or permanent visa on the basis of these occupations. This change is driven by the local unions and is reflective of the state of the Maritime Industry in Australia which has been in decline for several years and has an oversupply of skilled seafarers for the few domestic vacancies available. Introduction I started the original thread in 2012, and subsequently obtained my visa in 2013, I now live in Sydney and work offshore out of Western Australia. The original thread reached over a 1000 posts with a lot of valuable information, so I thought it would be worthwhile consolidating it into a new thread with some of the key information. This forum is a migration forum primarily aimed at British (poms) migrants, it isn’t a specialist seafaring forum and the members are mostly just people who have been through the process before, none of the information is authoritative. Please only post specific items relating to the thread topic, for any generic immigration guidance please post in the relevant sections of the website. You will see some information below on the process and some links to the guidance on the AMSA website, if you have serious difficulties understanding this then I would suggest you contact a MARA registered migration agent. Do not underestimate the difficulty involved in the migration process for a Ships Masters/Deck Officers and the costs involved.