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The Wreck of the Lady Mary: Costly clerical error stalls rescue efforts |
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At 5:40 a.m. on March 24, 2009, a geostationary satellite 22,236 miles above sea level wakes up. Its antennae have picked up a maritime distress signal from an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.
About the size of a large flashlight, an EPIRB is a required piece of equipment on most commercial fishing vessels. When submerged — that is, when a ship begins to sink — the device automatically releases from a bracket attached to the outside of a ship’s cabin or wheelhouse and floats to the surface. Normally, the local user terminal attaches the EPIRB registration information to the electronic message it sends to the mission-control computer, and when the SARSAT computer receives the emergency data, it notifies a watch-stander — the officer in charge — at a rescue coordination center. In the case of the Lady Mary, that’s the Fifth Coast Guard District’s headquarters, or Atlantic Area command center. But there’s a problem: The local user terminal can’t match the signal coming from the Lady Mary’s EPIRB with one of the more than half-million registered beacons in SARSAT’s database. Without a matching registration, there is no vessel name, and without a vessel name, the mission-control computer takes the local terminal’s information and "tables" it. The Lady Mary’s EPRIB also did not have a GPS, which was not mandatory. Read the complete installment of this series from New Jersey On-Line.
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MELISSA WOOD, NATIONAL FISHERMEN: Meting out the meager
May 22, 2012 - Listening to the New England Council's Groundfish Advisory Panel talk about how that industry is going to pay for monitoring costs is kind of like trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you've just lost your job. Though monitoring is important keeping costs down is critical. As Panel Member Gary Libby pointed out, "If we had 100 percent monitoring we probably wouldn't have an industry."
