I’ve been thinking about a question that seems increasingly relevant as autonomous technologies become more capable:
As navigation systems assume more of the work, which human navigation skills become more—not less—essential?
For centuries, maritime navigation has demanded disciplined orientation, continuous adaptation, and accountable judgment under uncertainty. Those principles seem just as relevant today, even as the tools evolve.
I’m interested in hearing from mariners, pilots, and navigators: What aspects of navigation and decision-making should always remain distinctly human, and why?
I’ve been amused to see the simultaneous forcing of more and more alarm-happy tech on us by the office, while I simultaneously read articles complaining that sailors are relying more and more on said tech. If I took every piece of navigation advice a SIRE vetter gave me, between manual ECDIS updates and granular detail for the passage planning software to produce a thirty-page document that nobody reads, passage planning would take the entire passage to complete and we’d be listening to non-stop alarms the whole way too.
My concern with increasing automation is that sailors will cease being able to function when all the gadgets go down or even just disagree with each other. We’re gonna have to start doing “navigation drills” the same way we practice firefighting and abandoning ship at this rate.
To more specifically answer the question, what choices to make in unusual situations, “special circumstances” per the Rules of the Road, SAR scenarios, or other mechanical or human casualties should require human input and decision-making. I trust the trackpilot to get me from point A to point B when everything works. I’d even trust an AI that can differentiate between real and false radar echoes to make collision avoidance decisions in the open sea. I just don’t trust the machines - and the programmers of those machines who’ve never lived at sea - to know what to do when things start to break. Everything at sea breaks eventually.
Thank you, I very much appreciate your insights. This is exactly the problem that my current work is positioned to address, and your perspectives are extremely valuable.
I’m retired but there are thousands of bridge watchkeepers out there still waiting for the one button that silences all the alarms and a display that shows what’s alarming in a priority list. You know - just like the engine room.
