EPIRB failures, where's the meat?
Is there a problem with EPIRBs? Robin Storm thinks so, and is even calling for a congressional investigation into what he perceives as an alarming number of failures and a flawed failure investigation system. But I read his whole report and, at the risk of sounding cranky, must ask: “Where’s the meat?” There are several supposed failures cited, none of which seem clearly the fault of the EPIRB itself or the COSPAS-SARSAT system:
* S/V Sean Seamour II: This is an interesting and complicated case. It seems that the boat’s main EPIRB, a 4.5-year-old ACR, only worked for a while and that it either sent out the wrong ID # (according to Robin in a Messing with Ships podcast) or the database registration was somehow messed up (more likely, I think), possibly by the boat’s owner. An 11–year-old back-up ACR worked for 10 hours and led to a dramatic rescue. ACR tells me that they offered to test the unit which was mistakenly attributed to an Alabama registration, but the Seamour’s owner declined.
* F/V Papa George: The assumption here is that the automatic hydrostatic activation found on Class A EPIRBs failed to work. But isn’t it possible that the unit failed to float free of the vessel? It’s really hard to mount an EPIRB where it will float free regardless of what the boat does, especially on fishing boats with lots of rigging. It strikes me that it’s always better to manually activate an EPIRB if possible.
* F/V Illusion: An initial USCG press release: “The Rescue Coordination Center, (RCC) in Juneau was notified that the crew was in trouble when the fishing vessel's registered electronic position indicating radio beacon, (EPIRB) was picked up by satellite shortly after the Illusion's crew abandoned ship. The EPIRB did not initially give a fix on the crew's location, and the RCC was able to ascertain that the Illusion had been fishing in Makushin Bay through further investigation.” There’s no evidence of failure here at all; this is how EPIRBS without the GPS option work. First, a geostationary satellite gets the distress message, and then LEO sats use Doppler shifting to get a location, which generally takes about an hour.
* F/V Ellie B: Robin may have made a mistaken link here—I see no Ellie B.—but he uses this BoatUS page elsewhere in his report. It’s about issues with the GPS option on some EPIRBs and PLBs that were discovered back in 2003. Extensive research was done on this, especially by Doug Ritter, and some gear was updated as a result. But throughout that process, no one found any problems with the basic EPIRB functionality. The GPS option can definitely speed up a rescue, but it is not necessary to one.
* F/V Sav-A-Buck: This is an initial newspaper report suggesting that an EPIRB that “should have signaled the Coast Guard that a lobster boat was sinking off the Isles of Shoals Sunday failed to send a distress signal when it hit the water…” Another hydrostatic activation failure? A more recent article suggests that the boat capsized—which would certainly make floating free difficult. But later the EPIRB floated up on a beach with other debris, so perhaps we’ll learn more. {Update, 5/27: Rob Stormer is grandly proclaiming that contrary to the Gloucester paper, the EPIRB has not been found. That makes sense, really, as it could very well be under the capsized boat, never given a chance to really fail.)
So where’s the meat? I have no doubt that EPIRBs can and will fail some times—and the more backups the better—but the equipment and related SARSAT system have proven themselves amazingly able, and I don’t see any evidence in this report to think otherwise. You can check out recent incidents here, and running stats here.
Bill T e-mailed this comment:
You said: "So where’s the meat? I have no doubt that EPIRBs can and will fail some times."
Perhaps so - but given the price and the fact that they are asked to work only once doesn't give me good feelings. A lot is left to trusting the vendors involved, and I'm not totally sure all that trust is warranted. I've heard second hand tales about the quality of the internals on ACR stuff (more like a MacGregor than a Hinckley) and observe the recent issues of GPS hanging up when a new satellite was introduced into the configuration, and various prior systematic issues with certain versions of software.
I would feel a lot better if someone at various places ( West marine stores, or major marinas) had the capability to independently power the gps and confirm that it was good output, and independently check the battery voltage. Independent power so as to not run down the main battery with checking.
Also note the story of that one RI based liferaft vendor that totally messed up repacking - just shows you how much we can actually trust the vendors on the sort of stuff like this. See this.
From Boat/US: "The horror stories that led to the proposed rules were several incidents in Rhode Island and Connecticut by repack facilities no longer in business. Customers who later opened their serviced canisters found their liferafts replaced by older models and one owner found the canister filled with old sails. A Coast Guard investigation of one company in Newport, RI, found 19 liferafts inadequately serviced. Of them, 16 had missing equipment, five had defective carbon dioxide cylinders, and 17 contained items that had expired.
These incidents led the Coast Guard to seek criminal prosecution, which was not pursued, but the agency did issue public safety alerts about the companies involved."