WHOI-90-52

Progra to Improve the Safety of Tankers and other Hazrdous Liquid Cargo Carrers
Operating in U.S. Waters
Background
Wiliam M. Pease
Raytheon Company
The Port and Tanker Safety Act of 1978 was enacte to reduce the likelihoo of accidents
involving oil takers and other hazdous liquid cago caers in U.S. waters. Among other
provisions, the act required a full complement of modern electronic navigation aids, including
collsion avoidance equipment. It also required Vessel Traffic Services (VS) to be instaled in
the major U.S. ports.
Ten yeas of experience gained since the enactment tells us that despite whatever progress in
saety was made, much more nees to be done. Oil spils, large and smal, are ocurrng many
hundreds of times each yea in U.S. waters. The EXXON VALDEZ catastrophe26 was the
largest of what is now recgnized as the most prevalent ty of accident -- vessel groundings
involving navigation or piloting errors of judgment from misinformation or neglect. In some
cases, the competency of ship's officers or pilots has also been caled into question.
In view of these circumstaces, land-base trffic monitoring systems are the only meas to bring
about a significat increase in the safe operation of ships and thus reduce the threat of spils and
their impact on the mare environment. This is not to say that ship board systems should be
ignored. It is importt to improve the automation of the myriad routine detals involved in a
ship's operation. Doing so would free ship's offcers for accurate and timely watchkeeping
which is key to efficient navigation. Also, shipboard and land base systems wil have to be
designed for the cooperative actions necssa to achieve maximum safety.
At present, VTS and other shore-base radar coupled with appropriate communication are the
principal meas for monitoring marne traffic from land. At this time, only a few harbors and
a tiny fraction of the costlne are covered by VTS. Each of these instalations includes radar
and communications as the principal facilties. Expanding this radar and communications
coverage to monitor al costa zones may sem to be the obvious direction to, tae to improve
the coverage by shore-base monitoring facilties. However, this in fact is not the case because
2~ell publicize grounding incidents in New England waters were the ARGO MERCHANT
off Cape Cod in 1977 and the WORLD PRODIG~ entering Narganset Bay in 1989.
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