Search For Phone Signal Caused Oil Spill, Say Japanese Investigators (theregister.com) 62
Japan's Transport Safety Board on Thursday judged that a cargo ship that spilled 1,000 tons of fuel oil into a pristine marine environment off the coast of Mauritius in 2020 was travelling off course in search of a cell phone signal. From a report: The MV Wakashio was en route from Lianyungang, China to a Brazilian port when, on July 25 2020, it struck trouble near Blue Bay Marine Park, a popular snorkeling spot on the Indian Ocean nation Mauritius. The Japanese-owned vessel was sailing under a Panamanian flag of convenience, and captained by a Indian national. According to the report, two days before it ran aground, the captain changed the 100,000-plus ton ship's route to travel five nautical miles from the coast line instead of the originally planned 22 nautical miles. He ordered the course change without obtaining proper marine charts of the area and therefore did not know that waters in the area are less than 20 meters deep.
The ship subsequently hit a coral reef. "Reefs and obstacles were displayed near the place of occurrence," reads the 89-page Japan Transport Safety Board report in Japanese. "The body buckled due to being knocked to the seabed and broke into the skin near the fuel oil tank. As a result, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil loaded in the tank spilled out to sea," the document states. The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.
The ship subsequently hit a coral reef. "Reefs and obstacles were displayed near the place of occurrence," reads the 89-page Japan Transport Safety Board report in Japanese. "The body buckled due to being knocked to the seabed and broke into the skin near the fuel oil tank. As a result, about 1,000 tons of fuel oil loaded in the tank spilled out to sea," the document states. The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.
Only one thing to say... (Score:1)
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He wasn't intimated on the same.
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wat (Score:2, Troll)
What is this story for? To make us more accepting of launching assloads of satellites to provide phone coverage? Is it an ad, "if only they had starlink"?
The cause of the spill wasn't seeking a phone signal, it was doing a shitty job of navigating and piloting while seeking a phone signal.
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It wasn't an ad for Starlink. But, now that you mention it... good idea! Thanks, drinkypoo!
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But if you're Ukrainian, then you have to upgrade to the Premium Deluxe+ package on Starshield from Elon Muskovsky. Always promise free shit to get them hooked and never let a good crisis go unmonetized.
What are you talking about?
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Rough summary: Musk gave free Internet to the Ukrainians when Russia cut the Internet cables at the start of the war. Then Musk turned off the free connection in the middle of a critical operation and saved Russia's Black Sea fleet. In order to get the connection back, the US govt now pays SpaceX for the Starlink connection. https://apnews.com/article/spa... [apnews.com]
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Rough summary: Musk gave free Internet to the Ukrainians when Russia cut the Internet cables at the start of the war. Then Musk turned off the free connection in the middle of a critical operation and saved Russia's Black Sea fleet. In order to get the connection back, the US govt now pays SpaceX for the Starlink connection. https://apnews.com/article/spa... [apnews.com]
No, Ukraine asked him to turn it on in Crimea in order to attack Russia and he refused. He gave a long interview on this.
Re: wat (Score:2)
My source: Quoting from Isaacson's book on Musk based on interviews with Musk:
"Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within a hundred kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly."
It was on
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My source: Quoting from Isaacson's book on Musk based on interviews with Musk:
"Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within a hundred kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly."
It was only when posting this comment back to Slashdot that I found this is incorrect. You can read the back and forth about it here:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
So the story is only partially true: the subs did fail silently mid-op, but it was because of geofencing, not proactive Musk actions. My post was correct insofar as this statement from Isaacson is what the original joke was about. But it turns out the joke was based on falsehood.
Good article. Here's Musk talking about it: https://youtu.be/tKqJ5-kkUGk?t... [youtu.be]
He makes some good points, like concerns about Russian retaliation that could destroy the ~$10B investment in StarLink.
And that the US has allocated $80 - $100 billion for Ukraine support but has excluded SpaceX from it
Re:wat (Score:4, Insightful)
What is this story for?
It's for reminding us about what the constant drive to get stuff at the cheapest possible rate means in side-effects.
Globalization is only possible because shipping is dirt cheap. It is dirt cheap because of all the things mentioned in the article, especially flags of convenience.
Utter failure to grasp the concept of "duty" (Score:2)
The article is a useful reminder of the power of sheer stupidity - reinforced by selfishness. Every day we see people frustrated and angry because they can't get a signal for their mobile contraptions. This episode demonstrates just how much harm can be caused by such behaviour.
The captain didn't grasp the difference between his professional duty and his personal inclinations. Of course such a person should never be given a position of responsibility in the first place; that he was suggests a serious failur
Walking into traffic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically the same as somebody walking into traffic because they're scrolling on their phone, but bigger.
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Also dumber. Because while it's not a good idea, you potentially *might* actually be able to read the drivel on your phone screen while walking through traffic. Whereas, the odds of success looking for a cell tower in the middle of the ocean, are quite poor.
Yep... unless you steer the ship way too close to the shoreline.
How about some accountability (Score:5, Insightful)
The company should be fined $1M per ton spilled. All money going to cleanup costs and if there is leftover then into an environmental fund. The captain should go to prison and lose his license permanently. All crew should also be penalized to a much lesser extent, perhaps 10 hours of environmental cleanup per ton spilled. All executive members of the company should be fined as well.
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That's one of the reasons it has a flag from somewhere a few well-placed bribes will ensure none of that ever happens. At least not the important parts. The ones about money and executive members.
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It may be Panamanian flagged, but it was not operating in international waters at the time.
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Which means you will bring your case where, exactly?
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Since it happened in the territorial waters of Mauritius, that means that the case would be brought in Mauritius. That's the way jurisdiction works. If you're inside the borders of a country, barring treaties and other arrangements that affect jurisdiction, then you fall under the jurisdiction of that country. Ships in territorial waters are not embassies. Ultimately flag state jurisdiction only counts on the high seas and other waters where the flag state has jurisdiction. You may wonder, for example, how
Re:How about some accountability (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and that is what happened [wikipedia.org].
Ignore the people below talking about registries; none of that applies here. There are international treaties regarding how ships must conduct themselves in territorial waters; in this case the 1976 Convention on Limitation of Liability Claims. Ultimately the company paid $65.6M in damages (per the treaty's stipulations), $34M for support for lost livelihoods of local fishermen, the operator paid another $10M to the recovery fund. The Captain and the lookout officer served 20 months in prison each for negligence and endangering safe navigation, which is a legal requirement of any captain.
Further the ship was unrecoverable, broke up and scuttled.
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The company should be fined $1M per ton spilled. All money going to cleanup costs and if there is leftover then into an environmental fund. The captain should go to prison and lose his license permanently. All crew should also be penalized to a much lesser extent, perhaps 10 hours of environmental cleanup per ton spilled. All executive members of the company should be fined as well.
Good luck collecting. IIRC, ship owner's liability is limited to the ship and cargo value, except in certain circumstances. So a fine, while it may seem nice, is likely not to be fully paid if at all.
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Pretty much all major shipping is insured. Most ports, including both ports the ship left and one it was headed for do not allow docking for ships without insurance policy.
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Pretty much all major shipping is insured. Most ports, including both ports the ship left and one it was headed for do not allow docking for ships without insurance policy.
I guess teh question then is how much insurance must they carry beyond the cargo value and ship.
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Enough to cover pretty much all potential damage. This is a massive industry with a lot of experience in non-warfare related damage caused by shipping.
Re: How about some accountability (Score:2)
How are oil spills not seen as a terrorist activity? How do we know it wasn't "spilled" intentionally?
Potential poetic justice ... (Score:2)
The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone. It also noted the behavior was not an isolated incident and that safety awareness among the crew at large was lacking.
All cell carriers in the World update their systems so this guy's phone will always be just... out of signal range -- perpetually teasing him with one bar as he moves around before announcing "No Service".
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The new version of a classic, I like it.
"Tantalus was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink."
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Thanks for that! I admit my background / education in Greek mythology is lacking -- though it sounds familiar...
Ships need monitoring (Score:2)
Re: Ships need monitoring (Score:1)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vess... [duckduckgo.com]
Re: Ships need monitoring (Score:1)
Almost forgot: Not only would behoove the company to know, The people who are shipping the goods being carried on the ship want to know too.
Re: Ships need monitoring (Score:2)
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For the most part they do [mapscaping.com]. As the page relates, companies use one or more methods to track ships.
If you like, you can track ships on the high seas right now [marinetraffic.com] or, if you zoom in, on inland waterways such as the Mississippi River or the Hudson River.
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From the summary, they were off course on purpose. Because the captain wanted a better cell phone signal.
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I've never been on a cargo ship, but is it easy to see a coral reef "less than 20 meters" under the surface from the bridge of one? I could imagine it just looked like more water until they hit something, which is why they shouldn't have even attempted to deviate from their course without local charts.
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Oil captains don't get paid enough to care (Score:2)
I was looking at the oil captain pay spread, of the reported answers it's anywhere from $38k-$134k USD. Of course, it could potentially be even worse.
Considering the staggering amount that these oil companies make on their product sold, they absolutely have more money to equip these ships with satellite internet a la starlink, or similar, as well as provide proper training to command staff, add satellite tracking for when ships go off course, and pay for global operations centers to manage ships on a 24/7
ok nvm, this happened in 2020, before starlink got (Score:2)
..big.
inmarsat in that region, as a satellite provider, is horribly slow. data by satellite providers is unlikely to be unlimited when it's working too. and the streams are usually really slow. Advertised data rates, at that time, could be as slow as 128kbps upload with 1-3mbps down, but with a bandwidth cap.
still, a global operations center should've notified the captain to not f*** around.
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You'd think an oil tanker could afford some BGAN.
I know for a fact it would give you more than a 64k Inmarsat channel in that area, or even two. They look like ISDN B channels. True, it would be only about 256k, but it's better than putting your tanker aground.
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Almost all civilian shipping is ran on razor thin margins. Costs are cut everywhere where insurance policy and law of the sea allows.
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I was looking at the oil captain pay spread, of the reported answers it's anywhere from $38k-$134k USD. Of course, it could potentially be even worse.
Considering the staggering amount that these oil companies make on their product sold, they absolutely have more money to equip these ships with satellite internet a la starlink, or similar, as well as provide proper training to command staff, add satellite tracking for when ships go off course, and pay for global operations centers to manage ships on a 24/7 basis.
this is a really clear case of corporate negligence, it's just unfortunate that international legislation has yet to keep up with policing bad actors in this space.
The cost of shipping oil, as a result, is a fraction of the value o the cargo. Which is why if oil prices swing enough it's profitable to reroute a ship to a new buyer.
McAllister: "Arr, I'm in a lotta trouble now. Hey, (Score:2)
McAllister: "Arr, I'm in a lotta trouble now. Hey, I'll give ya a hundred bucks if you'll take the blame."
what a stand-up crew! (Score:2)
I read this thinking they started a search mission after somehow detecting a cell phone signal adrift in the ocean. Like, okay, they are trying to help but being cavalier.
>The report noted that the captain of the vessel changed the voyage plan for the purpose of coming within range of signal for his smartphone
Oh sweet Jesus.
This is (probably) a cover story (Score:2)
My wife is from Mauritius and she follows events there quite closely. Obviously, this was a really big event.
The scuttlebutt is that the captain rerouted the ship as part of a drug shipment and since drugs are a really big problem in Mauritius so this would be pretty common.
After they hit the reef the cell phone story was cooked up to cover what was really going on. The captain and the shipping company are "big dogs" so nobody ever went to jail or paid any significant penalty either.
For all of the fisherm
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My wife is from Mauritius and she follows events there quite closely. Obviously, this was a really big event.
The scuttlebutt is that the captain rerouted the ship as part of a drug shipment and since drugs are a really big problem in Mauritius so this would be pretty common.
After they hit the reef the cell phone story was cooked up to cover what was really going on. The captain and the shipping company are "big dogs" so nobody ever went to jail or paid any significant penalty either.
For all of the fishermen who depend on that area for their living, "tough luck, schmuck."
That feels more plausible. From what I can tell those ships burn a ton of fuel, like that "detour" probably cost thousands, maybe tens of thousands in extra fuel.
If I'm hiring shipping captains there's two things I evaluate them on, hitting their schedule and keeping fuel costs in check, and detours would require a lot of explanation.
Not saying that folks entitled enough to waste that much time and money for their smartphones don't exist... but my money is he had a much stronger motive than that.
Re: This is (probably) a cover story (Score:2)
There's a factor that makes this story make more sense. I'd bet a few dollars that the captain (and maybe even the crew) were drunk. What else is there to do at sea?
Can you hear me now? (Score:2)
I guess he should have used Verizon.
One detail missing (Score:2)
Did he get his phone signal?
Starlink to the rescue? (Score:1)