News

Back to the Future

- But do we rely too much on technology?

asks Lars Østergaard

Never have seafarers had as much information at their fingertips as they do today. Especially in the two decades since I first went to sea, the job of the navigator has been transformed. I think wonderfully but also dangerously so, not just in terms of a reliance on technology, but in the pitfalls in interpretation of the signals.

I'm not talking about the inability to pick up a sextant and look to the horizon and translate the data collected onto an accurate position on a chart. That is an issue we cannot skip, but it has got to be remembered that machines are not fallible and what we must retain is the human ability to question their findings.

Perhaps the majority of our navigational tools today rely on satellites. Between us and the satellites lies the ionosphere. There's an eleven-year cycle which sees the sun pulsing out great flares which put more energy into the ionosphere, this causes the molecules to break up and disperse. The result is interference, making radio signals zig and zag. Zig and zag means a longer line, more time and a distorted message which delays reception of signals that could cause the loss of the precise position.

Misreading information or information that is misleading will lead to some seaborne mishap or disaster and the only safety valve will be the navigators' intuition to question all that is in front, beside and below them . . . and in their ability to being able to go back to basics.

We've just upgraded our ECDIS suites at Maersk Training, a routine and provident move. You know the result if you don't upgrade your in-car navigation system and you are on a new stretch of road, 'the voice' gets totally confused. You get there, but not without a little recalculating.

There is however some technology up there which needs more than an upgrading. There are three satellite navigations systems up there at the moment, the Russians have GLONASS and the Americans the GPS that we have grown to love.

Now the Europeans are making a contribution and it may prove to be the most significant. This is important since the GPS system is now in technology terms an old boy and is showing its age – the system is also a victim of its popularity. The old satellite will come out of commission in about three years, replaced by new versions which with three frequencies are more capable of dealing with today's technology.

The European version Galileo, is the new kid on the block and won't be fully operational until 2019, has certain advantages. It alone allows distress signals from the user's transmitter to go directly to a Rescue Coordination Centre which in turn initiates the rescue. It doesn't end there, in the professional version, the craft or person in trouble then gets a response to say help is on its way. What might end here is those long drawn out Hollywood survival sequences. What would it have done on the Titanic to have an immediate fix of location and for the ships nearby to understand the magnitude of the situation?

But back to the GPS over-use issue. What back-up is there if the screen goes fuzzy? It maybe that we have to take a technological step back and rely on shore-based beacon equipment as with RACON. Highly reliable it does have a range issue but since most navigational demands are when nearing land, it will be useful.

Many of the traditional beacons, like lighthouses, have diminished but what is opening up are areas of navigation never before undertaken by large craft. Global warming is opening up the North-West Passage creating a whole new economic region and route. Iceberg incidents are not confined to the last century, in recent years cruise liners taking adventure tourists to the Antarctic have come off second best in close encounters.

The warning signs are all flashing and one signal we are sending out from Maersk Training is that total or overreliance on technology is a danger you avoid at your peril.