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.