[QUOTE=anchorman;181454]What is the background of this particular Captain or what is the assumed background?[/QUOTE]
The particular captain B. Newill a long time Chouest captain of anchor boats was the third mate/towing expert.that videoed himself banjoing the tow and making light of the situation he should have never let himself be in. If he had Alaskan or similar experience before being chosen that fact was not mentioned in the hearing. He did “not hear” an overload alarm 38 times. His name is a matter of public record and the USCG report recommended disciplinary proceedings against him for his incompetence. Why he was chosen? He was the best they had I guess.
The Coast Guard report describes the harrowing series of events that followed. At daybreak on Dec. 27, still two weeks out of Seattle, the Edison Chouest employee managing the towline on the Aiviq side, Third Mate Bobby Newill, shot a cellphone video for his wife as he gradually let out a hundred yards more line, trying to find a sweet spot. The ship’s tow system was built by Rolls-Royce: a winch on the back deck and computerized controls up in the wheelhouse. Newill’s video shows the view through the wheelhouse window as the stern of the Aiviq bobs in the Gulf of Alaska, the Kulluk in the distance, then it pans to a computer monitor that displays towline tension. From 35 tons, the tension shoots rapidly into the triple digits — “Here we go,” Newill says — and peaks at 228 tons. “That is a good quality piece of wire,” he says as the numbers drop again.
Between 5:34 a.m. and 11:29 a.m., according to a later computer analysis by Rolls-Royce, the Aiviq’s “wire tensile strength overload” alarm went off 38 times. It was set to trigger at 300 tons. The alarm, a piercing ring, would not stop until Newill acknowledged it on the computer screen. New to Alaska and new to a ship that was new to the world, Newill later claimed that the alarm never went off. Coast Guard investigators concluded that he mistook the tension alarm for another alarm that was known to be acting up.
At 11:35 a.m. the towline snapped. Video shot from the Aiviq’s closed-circuit cameras shows the moment. It is unremarkable: The taut line stretches into the sea. The tail of the tug rises once again, and the line suddenly whips back and goes limp. The Aiviq keeps bobbing.
Chouest seems to have trouble finding people to operate outside the GOM. I guess the Master and the C.E. were the best they could find for the Gould down in Antarctica also.
[B]$2.1 million penalties in Gould pollution case[/B]
A Louisiana ship-operating company was sentenced in U.S. District Court in New Orleans on charges related to the illegal discharge of oil into the oceans, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Galliano, La., headquartered Offshore Vessels LLC (OSV), formerly Edison Chouest Offshore Vessels LLC, was sentenced to pay a criminal fine of $1,750,000 and remit a payment of $350,000 as community service to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. The community service funds are to be used to study polar water pollution and protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems in the Antarctic region. OSV also will serve a period of probation for three years, during which it will be required to operate under an Environmental Compliance Plan.
OSV pleaded guilty on July 22, 2010, to knowingly discharging waste oil from one of its vessels, in violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS).
“The criminal fine in this case will serve as a strong deterrent to all vessel companies, American and foreign, against deliberately violating the laws enacted to protect oceans,” said Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. "The required payment will provide a means of studying polar water oil pollution and its impact on Antarctica�s fragile marine ecosystem."
OSV owned and operated the R/V Laurence M. Gould (R/V Gould). The R/V Gould was a 2,966 gross ton American-flagged vessel that served as an ice-breaking research vessel for the National Science Foundation on research voyages to and from Antarctica. In its guilty plea earlier this year, OSV admitted that crew members knowingly discharged oily wastewater from the bilge tank of the R/V Gould overboard to the high seas, in violation of APPS. In doing so, they bypassed the ship�s oily-water separator, a pollution-control device. Regulations promulgated under APPS require that oily wastewater be discharged only after it has been sent through an oily water separator.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard Criminal Investigative Service. The case is being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Daniel Dooher of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice and Assistant U.S. Attorney Dorothy Manning Taylor.