Paper captain enforcement

Wow - a whole $12,000 fine. As long as the owner saved at least $12,001 I see no reason he wonā€™t keep right on doing it.

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A bit surprised about this case
Looks more like a Norwegian coastal seiner than a US Tuna longliner:

Here is a vessel with the same callsign and fishery registration as the one on the picture:

She was offered for sale some time ago (Dec.2021) (??)

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ā€œā€¦ the boarding officers found the U.S. citizen listed as captain could not identify the high-water alarm on the boat and did not know how to deactivate it,ā€¦ā€

If the location of the bilge alarms & how to disable the automation system is the litmus test of detecting a paper captain thereā€™s a lot of captains in trouble. Maybe all of them?

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You unplug it, right? :joy:

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I worked on a well stimulation vessel with one captain for over a year & a half. I had to show him something in an auxiliary switchboard room. When we were leaving that room he admitted to me that he didnā€™t even know that room existed. He was the real & paper captain but that ships engine spaces were like a maze. It took engineers & QMEDs weeks to figure it out. 3rd party vendors have told me they had been lost 15 minutes just walking around searching for their way back to the ECR. I can see how a captain wouldnā€™t know where the bilge alarms were.

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On a big ship the captain may well not know where every bit of engineering stuff is.
On a fishing boat that size, not knowing where the bilge alarms are is like asking the skipper of a Boston Whaler where the engine is and getting a blank look.