I cant believe how these pricks with all the latest navigation gear can be 25 km off course and hit the Great Barrier Reef !! With a $200 hand held gps you can know your exact position to within a few metres. What kind of f@#k knuckles are driving these floating environmental nightmares !!!

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out, will the chongs get flogged or will Kevin slap their wrists for getting lost.

Richiefish said...

I cant believe how these pricks with all the latest navigation gear can be 25 km off course and hit the Great Barrier Reef !! With a $200 hand held gps you can know your exact position to within a few metres. What kind of f@#k knuckles are driving these floating environmental nightmares !!!

You would have to wonder wouldn't you?
I think the problem could be that for ship navigation, they still rely primarily on 50 year old Gyro compass technology.
Although they probably carry GPS devices, by law, the navigation has to be done by the gyro compass. (This might have changed in the last 12 months. I haven't bothered to check.)
There are so many well entrenched rules and regulations on this stuff that it takes years and years before they accept that the new technology is sufficiently advanced and reliable to change over to it.

Gyro compasses, when properly set up are accurate to within a few feet but they can also be way off for a variety of reasons.



On the other hand, maybe the captain just nodded off.

Definitely a short-cut...didn't quite shorten the trip though, I hope the skipper ends up in some hot water over this.

we haven't really learnt a lot have we since the exxon valdez, what I don't understand is why we havent pumped all the oil out of the piece of crap that is in danger of breaking up and dumping its load all over OUR REEF

upwind said...

we haven't really learnt a lot have we since the exxon valdez, what I don't understand is why we havent pumped all the oil out of the piece of crap that is in danger of breaking up and dumping its load all over OUR REEF

No, some shipping companies have not learnt from the Exxon Valdez. In Esperance the Sanko Harvest suffered a similiar fate by 'taking a short cut'. Working in the shipping industry I am all too familiar with the pressure captains are under to get there on time.
However it is our environment that suffers the consequence.
Meeting some ships captains and crew you do wonder how they make it around the world. They do have the most modern navigation technology to assist, but some I would not let drive my car

It does seem to take time to work out what to do with the stricken vessel, but what do you suggest to do to pump the oil out?? You just cannot bring in another ship to the area and pump it out. The marine experts are doing all they can at present, and although it seems slow, they work to formulate the best plan they can. All too often however again the environment suffers.

All in all someone needs to feel the wrath of the mistakes made. Not sure it will happen though.

I think the standard advice is to run inside and stand in a doorway arch or under a sturdy table.
No, hang on,.. That's for an earth quake.
It's to run inside and crouch down on the bathroom floor.
No,.. Hang on. That's for a hurricane.

Hmm,. Shipping disaster,.. let me see.
Go to the upper deck and rearrange the deck chairs,.
Nope,. That's only if you're on board the ship.

Geez. We seem to be lacking a bit on advice for offshore shipping disasters.
Can't help there.
Richiefish seems to have a few ideas. You could ask him to be a bit more explicit.
Better check on the availability of ball hangers and fire ants.
Haven't seen any in K Mart.

dirtyharry said...

With all the technology around today (particularly satellites), isn't there some way to monitor where these things are and what route their taking and to bust 'em if they are seen to take the wrong route?

Like the Patagonian tooth fishers that cost the WA gov a fortune a few years back. From memory there was a lot of difficulty proving that they had caught the toothy little buggers in our waters. Isn't there satellite data that can show the path taken by a boat, and couldn't that have been used to prove that they were fishing where and when they were?

Maybe I expect too much from satellites and technology, but it seems to me that all of this should be very do-able and there shouldn't be any reason why tens of thousands of tons of metal floating around in the ocean shouldn't be able to be tracked.

Toothfishers-problem-why would they bother to install a transmitter to track them? Just like any of us volunteering to fit one to tell the cops when you speed? Other thing with the Toothfish (and whaling) is that only a couple of countries recognize those as Australian waters, only cos they claim areas there as well.

Chinkies seem to be extroadinarily lax sailors, Ive seen it many times in my seagoing life-usually minus the disaster.

dirtyharry said...

I'm not talking about devices fitted to the vessels. In my limited understanding of satellites it should be possible to monitor the movements of something as big as a ship given their size and vastly different signal they reflect relative to the vast expanse of ocean around them. I'm sure there's satellites with a <10m resolution - this should be plenty to see a ship on a background of ocean. The fact that this isn't being done suggests perhaps that it's my limited understanding of satellites that is the problem

A satellite can certainly track a particular ship if it is tasked to do so. The problem is, the high resolution required to do this then reduces the field of vision for the optics on the satellite so it could only track one ship, or a very small number in a small area. It would cost a huge ammont and is probably financially unviable.

The cheap and practiacl solution is to fit all ships wanting to traverse that region or any other critical area with GPS position transmitters similar to those used by some couriers & trucking companies.
The ship would have a small GPS receiver and then transmit the cordinates at regular intervals via satellite phone to a ground station in Australia. (or anywhere else)
The corordinates and identification data would be fed into a computer and the track and speed plotted.
Anything which indicated a hazard, such as running aground, collision risk or straying into restricted waters would generated an alarm tag on the track.
All tracks would be automatically identified and labelled with the ship name and anything else deemed relevant.
The main expense would be for the ground station. Just one station would be needed to cover all of Australia.
The shipboard components would be relatively cheap.
It will eventually happen. All it needs is the incentive. This might be it now.

dirtyharry said...

I'm not talking about devices fitted to the vessels. In my limited understanding of satellites it should be possible to monitor the movements of something as big as a ship given their size and vastly different signal they reflect relative to the vast expanse of ocean around them. I'm sure there's satellites with a <10m resolution - this should be plenty to see a ship on a background of ocean. The fact that this isn't being done suggests perhaps that it's my limited understanding of satellites that is the problem

great if it isnt cloudy! And the manpower to monitor the hundreds of ships in Aus waters?
Aus vessels have daily auto reporting procedures via InmarsatC with manual polling available. Not sure about foreign vessels.

And the manpower to monitor the hundreds of ships in Aus waters?

I wasn't really thinking there's be a control room with people watching ships slowly move across the screen, more that if I was a ship operator and knew that someone could go back and prove where I'd been and when if they wanted/needed to then I'd be pretty careful about where I went.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear that it wouldn't work. Which I guess is why I'm not a satellite dude or ship captain!

Ban the whole coal thing its stuffing the whole world up .....fast

Wake up australia for selling the stuff in the first place

An letting those bulk carriers anywhere near our pristine reefs is just plain dumb as you can get.....hello.

dirtyharry,

Commercial ships entering the Great Barrier Reef area are required to report their position on a regular basis under the REEFVTS system. So AMSA should have known their position. AMSA is also responsible for managing the response to a spill under the national plan. They have a variety of scenarios and contingency plans, depending on what is spilled where.

You can bet AMSA started work on the planning as soon as the spill was notified. But as has been said, it takes time. I doubt anyone would have a spare ship just laying around in the area and big enough to take off the cargo of a bulk carrier. Not only that, before doing anything they often need to wait for the right conditions or risk making things worse.

Blownaway said...

Ban the whole coal kite thing its stuffing the whole world up .....fast

Wake up australia for selling the stuff kites in the first place

And letting those bulk carriers kiters anywhere near our pristine reefs is just plain dumb as you can get.....hello.

just kidding

Apparently it was all going well until they had to cut a hard left to avoid hitting a whale.
They're an endangered species you know.

maxm said...

Now that the ship has been refloated off, it would be a good time for both Queensland and Australian governments to let us know what the hell that ship was doing there:

o did they know about it?

o if not, why not?

o if so why was it allowed?

o what will be done to prevent similar incidents in future?

Anything else that needs to be added to the list?

They dont think they need to tell us.