I’ve never seen that. What ports are you talking about?
I’ll vouch for the damn squid boats with their arc lights working right on the route between Sasebo, Japan and Ulsan, Korea… that can’t even see you through their welding goggles. Next to Nigerian fishing canoes, I think that was my least favorite run ever.
In the approaches to the Shanghai port. Or for that matter any Chinese port. When the fishing fleet departs in the morning, you will be lucky to find a gap
The lines of small vessels going into Shanghai are not fishing boats, they’re coasters.
Fishing vessels, surely.
Here is a link to AIS Marine Traffic for Shanghai, around 800 - 900 cargo vessels a day, fishing vessels are 30 or 40 a day,
I have sailed those waters for 10 years from 2005 to 2015, having to spend long hours on the bridge (as s Master) overseeing the OOW navigate through the concentration of fishing fleet and fishing nets in poor visibility. The AIS transponders are fitted on top of the buoys secured to the fishing nets. The AIS ids are mostly numbers. These fishing boats/ fishing nets cover the East China Sea and the Yellow sea, although not so much in the South China Sea. The East China Sea has now been nearly denuded of fish. I am therefore talking from my experience.
Here’s a link to yesterday’s Senate testemony by the CNO.
My favorite part was when Admiral Richardson said he “Agreed fully, 100% sir” with Senator King’s suggestion to install a radar alarm buzzer in the captain’s cabin. 
[quote=“Kennebec_Captain, post:799, topic:45129”]
I’ve never seen that. What ports are you talking about?
[/quote]I’ve seen it a few times as well. It can happen when a fishing port reopens after being closed for weather.
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Those are AIS equipped. What about the rest…
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I’ve been in that line. The vessels are a mix of deep-sea and coasters, most of them, by far, are coasters.
Unbelievable! Wonder if the Captain, or whatever they call him in USN, has a slave- and/or full function- radar or ECDIS display with radar overlay is his cabin.
What a joke. Richardson is a clueless bobble-head yes man.
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I would agree having a slave ECDIS or whatever system in the captains day room would be helpful but the thought of a buzzer or alarm is utterly ridiculous. What scales would you set the alarm, who is tuning the radar what about rain or other background clutter. Putting a display in the captains stateroom and calling it a fix is seriously flawed thinking in my opinion addressing your bridge competency and navigational policies would be a good start to fixing the problem i’m just saying.
Get a clue Mr Richardson
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There’s already a display in both of the CO’s cabins(at-sea and in-port), as well as in the officer’s mess.
The CO always can just glance at it and see the nav picture + radar contacts.
Amazing with all those eyes on the displays, no one saw this (non-stealth commercial ship) coming…?!
Well, in Fitzgerald’s case the CO was asleep because it was at like 2am.
This is really making me glad I didn’t take that Navy scholarship back in school… at least he doesn’t have a VHF DSC in his stateroom to go off all the time with “All Ships” tests at all hours though. I would imagine that the alarm settings will wind up much more sensitive with disliked CO’s though.
There will be studies on how to implement this, a research and development budget and finally an RFP for a ridiculous system with an eventual obscene cost and price overrun that no one will use.
Mission accomplished!
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Yes and the Admiral who pushes through the RFP will retire to a board seat on the company we the tax payer are writing the checks to.
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