Re: Bad Situation in the Gulf.
I'll offer a few thoughts from the persepective of someone who flew search and rescue missions, as an active duty Coast Guard Aircrewman many years ago, and as someone who occassionally does SARs on a volunteer basis.
As to the matter of required equipment, my take on it is that the best way for us not to have laws put in place, is not to do stupid things. Obviously this is a very oversimplified statement, but its still true. When things like this happen, especially when famous people are involved, legislators decide to burn up some ink writing laws.
A part of me wishes that legislators were forced to work only part time, because doing so would limit the amount of time that they could spend dreaming up new laws. But there is more to it - laws often get passed because of the cost of irresponsible behavior. Consider that, during the peak of this search effort, there were several Coast Guard ships and boats, three CG C130 aircraft, several CG helicopters, an Air Force C130 and several Air Force helicopters involved, I would not be in the least bit surprised at a "price tag" of several million dollars for the mission. While I don't mean to make light of the pain that families and friends are feeling right now, that cost occurred because some folks made a very bad decision in regard to catching a few fish.
As I have said in other threads, people who conduct searches are glad to do so most of the time. We realize that generally prudent people sometimes get into situations that they probably could not have predicted. We classify such a scenario as "stuff happens." On the other hand, we also see many situations that are very much a direct result of ignoring the obvious. This case was one of the latter category. Going 30 - 50 miles out to sea alone in a small, single engine boat is just dumb, period. Even in good weather its dumb, because all it takes is an engine problem and you are stranded with no way to get help. Worse yet, to do such a thing when bad weather is predicted, and to then ignore rising seas and stay out until just before nightfall, is absolutely begging for something bad to happen.
On the issue of DSC radios, EPRIBS and PLBs, yes they are expensive. I don't own one for that reason, but I also don't run my boat offshore. I'm not particularly in favor of more laws requiring them, either. That said, price of a product is often a function of unit cost and the more of these items produced and sold, the less expensive they will become. I also like Mark42's idea about subsidizing purchase of such devices. While we sure don't need to have government paying for more stuff right now, I think such a program would actually pay for itself many times over. All it would take is a bunch of searches like this to never happen.
Even given the current cost of communication and locating devices, if a person is going to opreate a boat in open sea, having a way for rescue agencies to pinpoint location, usually makes a huge difference in the ability to find them. During the course of our other thread on this subject, I held back on comment about how hard it is to find a small boat or a person in the water. I did so because the technology has changed so much since I was flying SARs and I didn't want to inadvertantly give bad information. In particular, we were just beginning to test infrared/thermal devices, while they are now used routinely. As I read the news pieces, however, it seems like those tools didn't make much difference here.
What I can tell everyone about conducting a visual search from either an aircraft or a boat, is that it is very difficult to do - especially in regard to an individual in the water. Simply put, its darn near a stroke of luck when you spot something that actually turns out to be what you are looking for. This is so, because you constantly see bits of light reflected off of waves, dark spots in the water when a wave crest forms a shadow, debris and even large fish that sometimes look like a body from the air. As you scan, you become almost overloaded with "mini decisions," as to just what it is that you are seeing at any given moment. In sort of a "micro way," you also agonize over every one of those decisions, because they can become wasted time if you react to each of them, but could also cost a life if you ignore the wrong one.
What I hope that I am pointing out, is that every little thing that a boater can do to make it easier for people to find him/her/them, can be tremendously important. In this case, for example, we have a guy who owned a boat that was probably worth $50,000 or more, yet there were no locating devices aboard. That is such a shame, because if there had been such devices, all four fishermen would probably be alive and we wouldn't be having as much of a discussion on this.
Boating is a great hobby and I don't think any of us want to see it regulated "to death," but we really are more in control of that outcome than we think. All we have to do is to become spokespersons among our peers to encourage better decision making and acceptance of responsibility.
