Ambassador Cruise Line, a UK-based firm that operates three cruise ships (Atmosphere, Ambition and Renaissance) from regional ports throughout the UK, revealed yesterday in a press launch that it’s going to set up what it calls an “superior man overboard (MOB) detection system,” referred to as ZOE, aboard the Ambition cruise ship. The ZOE system is designed to detect and monitor passengers and crew members who fall into the water throughout man overboard (MOB) incidents utilizing a “mixture of infrared and daylight cameras, sensors, and software program.”
The MOB system was designed and manufactured by Zelim, an Edinburgh-based maritime security innovator. The set up of the ZOE tools is suppose to ship “instantaneous detection and monitoring of individuals within the water” following MOB incidents. “There’s now confirmed expertise accessible that mitigates the danger of dropping lives to MOB incidents, particularly in tough seas and in dead nights,” in accordance with a Zelim spokesperson.
The expertise additionally just lately handed Lloyd’s Register approval exams with a 98% MOB detection charge.
The Cruise Vessel Safety and Security Act (CVSSA) of 2010 requires passenger vessels working out of U.S. ports “to combine expertise that can be utilized for detecting passengers who’ve fallen overboard.” There are only a few cruise line working ships out of U.S. ports which have computerized man overboard programs put in. Many corporations, together with all Royal Caribbean ships and each vessel owned by Carnival Company (almost 100 ships), don’t have any MOB programs put in. Most of those corporations unconvincingly declare that MOB programs are allegedly unreliable.
There have been 420 passengers and crew members who’ve gone overboard from cruise ships and ferries since 2000, in accordance with main cruise professional Dr. Ross Klein. There have been 170 individuals who have gone overboard from cruise ships owned by Carnival Company, 86 from Royal Caribbean / Superstar Cruises / Silversea Cruises, 32 from Norwegian Cruise Line, 27 from MSC Cruises, and solely 2 from Disney Cruises.
Just one individual (a crew member) has gone overboard throughout an Ambassador cruise. Ison Dias, age 27, from Goa, India, went overboard from the Atmosphere final Might. He’s survived by mother and father who have been reportedly residing within the U.Okay., on the time of their son’s disappearance, the place the Atmosphere is home-ported. He reportedly was final seen on CCTV video within the early morning of Might 3, 2024 on an open deck of the cruise ship. There was a delay of round 7 hours between the time that he went overboard and when the ship rotated to retrace its path.
Mr. Dias’s disappearance is precisely the kind of incidents which computerized MOB programs are designed to deal with. A immediate alert that he gone went overboard and a system which might monitor him within the water even at night time might have resulted in a well timed search and rescue. With out such a system, in search of an individual who went into the ocean at nighttime is like in search of a needle in a haystack.
There are at present no legal guidelines which require Ambassador to put in computerized MOB programs as a result of it sails solely from U.Okay. and European ports. Solely the U.S. has such a legislation (the CVSSA) requiring cruise traces working out of U.S. ports to put in such life-saving expertise.
To our information, just one European cruise line (MSC Cruises) has put in an computerized MOB system however solely on just one MSC ship. In 2017, we reported that MSC Cruises introduced that it had put in a state-of-the-art man overboard system on the MSC Meraviglia and was planning to deploy comparable programs throughout its fleet of cruise ships.
MSC Cruises indicated that it developed an “clever video capturing and evaluation system” in collaboration with “safety expertise consultants, Bosch and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.” The Swiss-based cruise line introduced that it has examined the brand new man overboard system on the corporate’s latest ship which debuted in June (2017). MSC reported that “by means of over 25,000 hours of video evaluation, intensive software program testing and steady algorithmic updates, the system has now reached a confirmed accuracy stage of 97%.”
All cruise ships operated by Disney Cruises have such programs.
All different cruise traces, similar to Royal Caribbean / Superstar Cruises and all Carnival Company-owned ships, refuse to put in such dependable and efficient MOB programs.
Kudos to Ambassador for investing in passenger and crew member security, particularly when there isn’t a authorized requirement to put in such state-of-the-art expertise within the first place.
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Ambition cruise ship – Zelim; Zelim web site – Zelim
