One wonders if you could drop a battery operated GPS beacon reporting by satellite on these things to report back their position once a day once it has been abandoned. Something like that should be able to run for a couple of years at least.
Maritime salvage law is always interesting as it feels like it was mostly written in the 1600 and 1700's :-)
My company [1] is developing a solution just like this one, with added inertial monitoring. It is meant for studying a vessel's or a platform's maximals movements at sea remotely, for fuel consumption optimization in principle, but it is also useful for black box purposes.
It does not use AIS but Iridium, so the device can relay custom information. In this case, it could have been useful to know about the vessel's health from how it was moving: it would have been very easy to know if it was going to sink if it would have begun to list to one side permanently, for example. It would have been just a matter of dropping our box and a big solar panel on deck.
In addition to that, it feels like the navy / coast guard could drop that GPS beacon off when they rescue the crew and have a live map that shows the vessels set adrift so that others can avoid hitting them, especially in a storm. Vessel ID and size, GPS coordinates and notify the owner to go pick it up.
This came ashore only a few miles from where I live, apparently there is a lot of confusion over who even owns the boat, media is saying it was stolen twice, US coast guard tried to identify owner when the crew was initially rescued.
When the crew is rescued from a ship I can imagine they see the ship as lost and it is probably going to sink. Because that's why they rescued the crew in the first place.
So GPS won't help much.
But I can imagine an other kind of beacon could be useful to recover things from the sunken ship.
I don't think that ships are abandoned and properly lost at sea very often. It's uncommon enough that it was on the front page of the BBC news website, and it's on the front page of HN.
Basically, it's a race-to-the-bottom as far as responsibility for the externalities [1] of ship-based transportation goes. Why does Bolivia, a land-locked, third world nations "have one of the largest commercial fleets in the world"[2]. If responsibility for the negative parts of shipping can be shifted indefinitely, it means it never goes into costs, which facilitates trade and "wage arbitrage" [3].
I used to work in the supply-chain industry setting up the trucking end of cross-ocean shipments (mostly full truckloads of electric toothbrushes coming from China). I'm trying to think of ways to push back on this behavior but it's tough in such a low margin industry. The best approach is probably to threaten their revenue source --- I know that the transportation departments setting up these shipments (and therefore approving payment to the shipping company) don't even think/care about this(they are pressured to get all their loads covered by the end of the day by the toothbrush company)...so it's probably on the consumer (who pays for the electric toothbrush) to hold companies more accountable for the vendors they choose to work with.
If I had access to a list of companies who held their entire supply chain to a certain set of standards, I'd be willing to pay a little more for my toothbrush.
Well, Ireland still has a Receiver of Wrecks. It's their problem now.
Any of the big salvage companies, Titan or Smit or Mammoet, can deal with such a wreck if paid to do so. It's expensive, but routine. Ireland has local salvage companies, too. Once it's decided who pays the bill, one of them will probably be brought into deal with the mess.
if anyone is interested in this topic of how these things happen and the general lawlessness of the seas due to tragedy of the commons I highly recommend Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina
> Various authorities had become aware of its aimless drift around the world. It was last spotted in September 2019 by a British Royal Navy ship.
I wonder if the mythological archetype of the "ghost ship" originated from cases like this: unidentified, unmanned ships roaming the seas on their own, in a time before there was a global record of abandoned ships. Doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to assume they're crewed by ghosts.
> Normally, damaged or sunken ships remain the property of their owners, who are responsible for securing a solution...
Sounds like that was written on behalf of public companies who imagined they'd always want to assert their ownership rights. It was not written while mindful of the possibility of anonymous LLCs who have a salvage bill, an environmental problem, and rescue operations expenses tied to the ship and would rather it sank in the middle of the ocean...
I never understood why governments don't require companies to put down cleanup expenses upfront or purchase insurance or similar so they can't externalize these costs. Same with virtually any commercial building, etc.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|6 years ago|reply
Maritime salvage law is always interesting as it feels like it was mostly written in the 1600 and 1700's :-)
[+] [-] dasv|6 years ago|reply
It does not use AIS but Iridium, so the device can relay custom information. In this case, it could have been useful to know about the vessel's health from how it was moving: it would have been very easy to know if it was going to sink if it would have begun to list to one side permanently, for example. It would have been just a matter of dropping our box and a big solar panel on deck.
[1] http://core-marine.com
[+] [-] LinuxBender|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywacaday|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckydata|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoyer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thdrdt|6 years ago|reply
So GPS won't help much.
But I can imagine an other kind of beacon could be useful to recover things from the sunken ship.
[+] [-] toomanybeersies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josteink|6 years ago|reply
What do you mean by GPS beacon? It gets a GPS-position and transmits it... where? Using what carrier?
You do have AIS already, and it is absolutely battery-operable, but I’m not sure to what extent the equipment is battery operated in the real world.
A typical aid transmitter
[+] [-] ultimoo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_labor_arbitrage
[+] [-] PostOnce|6 years ago|reply
They would like to regain control of said coastline. In fact, they have a holiday to commemorate said loss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%ADa_del_Mar
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2015/05/09/beaches-of...
[+] [-] jb775|6 years ago|reply
If I had access to a list of companies who held their entire supply chain to a certain set of standards, I'd be willing to pay a little more for my toothbrush.
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
Any of the big salvage companies, Titan or Smit or Mammoet, can deal with such a wreck if paid to do so. It's expensive, but routine. Ireland has local salvage companies, too. Once it's decided who pays the bill, one of them will probably be brought into deal with the mess.
[+] [-] core-questions|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NwmG|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rezgi|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _bxg1|6 years ago|reply
I wonder if the mythological archetype of the "ghost ship" originated from cases like this: unidentified, unmanned ships roaming the seas on their own, in a time before there was a global record of abandoned ships. Doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to assume they're crewed by ghosts.
[+] [-] mothsonasloth|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|6 years ago|reply
Sounds like that was written on behalf of public companies who imagined they'd always want to assert their ownership rights. It was not written while mindful of the possibility of anonymous LLCs who have a salvage bill, an environmental problem, and rescue operations expenses tied to the ship and would rather it sank in the middle of the ocean...
[+] [-] jessaustin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvaldes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindcrime|6 years ago|reply
[Interviewer:] So what do you do to protect the environment in cases like this?
[Senator Collins:] Well, the ship was towed outside the environment.
[Interviewer:] Into another environment….
[Senator Collins:] No, no, no. it’s been towed beyond the environment, it’s not in the environment
[Interviewer:] Yeah, but from one environment to another environment.
[Senator Collins:] No, it’s beyond the environment, it’s not in an environment. It has been towed beyond the environment.
[Interviewer:] Well, what’s out there?
[Senator Collins:] Nothing’s out there…
[Interviewer:] Well there must be something out there
[Senator Collins:] There is nothing out there… all there is …. is sea …and birds ….and fish
[Interviewer:] And?
[Senator Collins:] And 20,000 tons of crude oil
[Interviewer:] And what else?
[Senator Collins:] And a fire
[Interviewer:] And anything else?
[Senator Collins:] And the part of the ship that the front fell off, but there’s nothing else out there.
[+] [-] throwaway894345|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BetaCygni|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamthebot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lb1lf|6 years ago|reply
Really - it is quite common for mariners not to know who the owner is.
[+] [-] jessaustin|6 years ago|reply
So what's the story behind this mysterious ship without a crew?
This is actually the meaning of the term "ghost ship".