Sailed4seas的部落格

Chapter 5

Memory arouse– situational awareness – training and mentoring

The awareness is the perception of a situation.

Our conscious awareness is our attention which generated from same structure of knowledge, skill, culture, emotion, intuition.   

•     Knowledge is something we know about the environment which stored in our ST memory.
•     Skill is something in our LT memory which we can do or recognize it without think over twice.
•     Culture is our group LT memory usually refers to the interaction of people.
•     Emotional feeling is the green or red light for action in normal situation.
•     Intuition is response from our subconscious/unconscious in emergency situation.
•     Attention is our conscious awareness of the situation.

In last chapter, we discussed about the attention have to shift according to the situation varied. In vessel turning in a buoyed channel, we have turning maneuverings procedures to be aware of:

Before the turning maneuvering begin, OOW should direct his attention to remember

• next course reading to steer?      Rank D
• time to arrive next turning point?  Rank C
• time need for turning, what the rate of turn are appropriate?  Rank B
• time and position to put wheel over?       Rank A    

If everything is under control with definite cause and effect sequences, we will lost our interest in it and become complacency. What things will happen if OOW don’t know how to put his attention to aid situation? If the OOW don’t need to make the decision for the situation, the most probably way is to look at everything one by one then doing nothing at all. Because his brain did not give him any clue what he should do right now, he become a bystander although the management may need his help immediately. This phenomenon we called “glancing”: seeing without doing anything. As we have learnt our conscious ability is limited to 7 items in any time. Why a man can make a 30 minutes speech without any stop? The reason is because we have our working memory to support our daily activities without any hesitation.      

Like the drawing above, our working memory are our ST memory ( knowledge), LT memory (Skill), group LT memory (Culture) working together (rational) and under our feeling (emotional) influence. Well, how complex these brain activities have to work together without conflict? Yes. We have to take our time in the first time in everything we do to help us to organize all things together and make correct decision in our procedure and context. After the first time success, we gain some knowledge and skill. Next time we will be able to work smoother and faster. Roman is not built in one day. So, our working memory is not built in one day. All our memory competing in our working memory area and the correct choice of the memory options to us are enhanced by each time success in completing the work. Soon or later, the correct working sequence will form in some part of our brain. Now, it becomes our working habit.               

Working habit is the program in our working memory.

Not like our conscious which is limited to 7 items, our working memory can work in our whole brain base to include all kinds of memories available to us. The necessary items to surface on our conscious must be in a correct sequence, otherwise we might confuse by what we are doing. A habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur unconsciously. This definition is commonly accepted in psychology. For a young OOW who has a little experiences of watch, his working habit had not formed yet. We cannot expect his knowledge learnt from maritime collage and skill knowledge leant from Company safety policy and Master standing/night order to be applied unconsciously. Once the options are evaluated in his conscious level, he will have to follow the Magical 7 rule. Valuable time are slipped away while Young OOW is not doing nothing, only he doing it in his own slow pace. Any abrupt interruption in this slow perception/evaluation/decision process to give our knowledge/skill/experience may correct some possible error of working memory but will not help OOW to form his working habit.

Lack of training :

Case study: MAIB Report NO 18/2014 on the investigation of the fire on board

At 0315 (UTC+2) on 26 April 2013, a fire broke out in a crew cabin on board the UK

registered general cargo ship. The ship was on passage from Gibraltar to Belfast with a cargo of cement.

The crew member AB2, in whose cabin the fire started, had been consuming alcohol and smoking cigarettes. He had continued to smoke after climbing into bed and had fallen asleep while holding a lit cigarette. It is probable that the lit cigarette then melted an adjacent sofa’s vinyl covering and ignited the foam seating beneath.

The crew member awoke, discovered the fire, proceeded to the bridge and informed the second officer, who then sounded the fire alarm. The crew mustered and then attempted to contain and fight the fire. However, the fire was not finally brought under control until 1226, after two fire-fighting teams had transferred to the ship from a Spanish naval vessel.

Response to the fire and alarm

AB2

It is probable that AB2’s consumption of alcohol impaired his ability to wake up and then adversely affected his reaction to the developing fire. Further, his delay in waking meant that the fire was already well developed before he had an opportunity to react. However, his reaction on waking was poor. Prompt action in shutting the porthole, alerting other crew members by shouting and sending another crew member to the bridge to sound the fire alarm, and either then attacking the fire locally with a portable fire extinguisher or closing the cabin door, might well have contained and potentially extinguished the fire. Such action is recommended in Chapter 10 of COSWP. However, the effects of the alcohol and his burn injuries contributed to AB2’s ill-preparedness to respond effectively to the emergency. Consequently, his reaction to the sudden stress of the situation was to throw an already burning blanket at the fire and run from his cabin to the bridge, leaving the door open

The other crew members

By the time the fire alarm had been sounded on the bridge and other crew members had been alerted, the alleyway on Deck 2 had filled with smoke. In accordance with MGN 71(M) (Paragraph 1.6.2), the Emergency Muster List required the crew to muster with warm clothing and their lifejackets to hand. Although some considered there was sufficient time to dress before evacuating their cabin, none of them took a lifejacket, and AB1 considered it safer to evacuate through his open cabin porthole than via the alleyway. No one considered using an EEBD to assist their breathing, and no attempt was made by anyone to activate the remote emergency ventilation fan stop adjacent to the 2/O’s cabin or to close the open held back internal doors in an attempt to contain the fire (Figure 1).

Sleep inertia can cause a dip in motor and cognitive performance after being woken abruptly, especially from a deep sleep, and this does not equip individuals well to cope with stressful, emergency situations. However, the shortcomings in their evacuation procedures indicate that vessel’s crew were ill-prepared for the emergency.

Mantle stress degraded our working memory application.

From statement of this case, we can easily identified the possible human errors had been made and more appropriate actions should be taken by the crew on board. These more appropriate actions we assumed workable are by the talking only. Even we acquired all knowledge of correct procedures to be followed by each fire break out, no one can sure of our responses at fire scene will be as correct as those procedures required us to do. For we did not have the working habit which we can rely on in every each emergency case without thinking and hesitation. We can only achieve these necessary working habits by constantly drill to set up our skills. Those drills and exercises necessary for safety of ship operation are compulsory by ISM, MARPOL, SOLAS …international conventions.

The key safety issues identified in this case were:

• Ship’s crew were ill-prepared for the emergency; there was a lack of leadership, and sub-standard fire-fighting techniques resulted in crew members being unnecessarily exposed to danger.
• The records of some emergency drills recorded in the ship’s Official Log Book were falsified, which calls into question the validity of other records and demonstrates that a complacent approach to safety existed on board.
• The ship owners need to involve its crews in the application of the SMS to ensure its success was not fully recognized.
• The lack of a national database for International Safety Management Code audits constrained the Maritime and Coastguard’s ability to conduct fleet performance trend analysis, and to ensure that a consistent approach to auditing was carried out.

This investigation reveals some drills and exercises entry were falsified. Even all drills and exercises are carried out duly diligent and honestly, our working habits (or skills) are still cannot met the actual environment requirement. Imaging a fire drill with an open fire at poop deck in very limited and confined area where we can always approach from windward direction to extinguish it. At the fire scene, we will have no choice but to face the heat and smoke in front of us and take further steps forward at the cost of burning our clothes and skin to stop the fire at the very beginning of fire outburst. Our dedication and devotion to the company, to the ship and to the crews on board are at stake. Recently, Costa Concordia, operated by Costa Crociere (Costa Cruises), is one of the largest ships ever to be abandoned. Captain Schettino was arrested on preliminary charges of manslaughter in connection with causing a shipwreck, failing to assist 300 passengers, and failing to be the last to leave the wreck.      

Those working habits, mentality degradation are caused by our mantle stress at scene. The stress levels are closely related to our working performance mostly through memories available to us. If the situations are familiar, we will feel less stressful. If the situations are very familiar, we will engage in automatic reactions which are with all or some of these qualities: more efficiency, lesser awareness, unintentionally, uncontrollability.

Situation Awareness are feelings while working.

Our working habit support by our working memories should adjust by local environment (ST memories) to form a suitable strategy. If our awareness of the environments are lost, we will do the job like a robot indifferent and invariable. The difficulties of this dilemma is our conscious capacity is limited by Magical 7 and we have to rely on our working habit to chunk the situation into manageable level. In other hand, we have to be aware the environment variable in time to properly prepare for any change. The solution to these conflicts is like the computer programming (our working habit are also part of biological computer, brain, programming) to time sharing techniques. So our situation awareness has to include the program of Priority Setting and arrangement in each situation development.         

The master of every man’s priority is his attention. The driven engine of our attention is our feeling. Most of our routines on the works are working habits with familiar feeling together with it. In routine works we got the feeling to take action to avoid any uncertainty ( or take advantage of the situation) called situation awareness.   

Feeling as we learnt from past chapter is our subconscious and unconscious communication to our conscious. When the feeling is good we become less situation awareness. When the feeling is bad we become more situation awareness. When we have no feeling aroused we have no situation awareness at all. Situation awareness is a military term used in modern industrials, we quote two definitions more closely related our structure as below:

• "the combining of new information with existing knowledge in working memory and the development of a composite picture of the situation along with projections of future status and subsequent decisions as to appropriate courses of action to take" (Fracker, 1991b)
• "the continuous extraction of environmental information along with integration of this information with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture, and the end use of that mental picture in directing further perception and anticipating future need" (Dominguez, Vidulich, Vogel, & McMillan, 1994)

From the definitions above, we will have the trouble to form the mental picture of it inputs (new information) + (existing knowledge) into current structure (working memory ) to know continuous developing situations (development of the situation) and projection of future and appropriate courses of action to take. For all these mental pictures piece are processed in our brain, people cannot make any improvement by themselves without proper training and mentoring, like we cannot change our personalities for this trait of brain activity had leaded our life for so many years. By this impression, it is very hard for OOW to develop necessary situation awareness by this guide line. However, the truth is “OOW take the watch everyday in thousands of vessels by its guts”. Situation awareness comes to us in a very simple way of feeling.

The simple truth of life is “people doing everything by his guts told him”. If someone complain and say “No, I am doing everything by my brain.” He probably right about himself because he has no guts. The guts is our personal trait of personal courage and determination; toughness of character. Something we can do without guts like tie a shoes string or your buttons on shirt. It is our procedural memory worked in our daily life. If things getting more complicate than these, we will have to set up our priority to put something first. The priority settings of things to be taken care of need our guts to make the arrangement. The gut is our feeling of the situations. If we felt comfortable about the situation, we will do nothing to change or improve. If we don’t like this man who won’t think about the need to do anything, we will say he got more guts than me. The man easily get alert and response without proper assessments, we will call him “jump out conclusion” and deem him as“no guts”. For a well trained OOW, the feelings of situations are more comfortable if he can handle without any uncertainty and risk taking feeling. For an inexperienced OOW, the feeling is bad. That’s all.

Situation Awareness training and mentoring. 

If we had bad feeling of any situation, we should read this internal signal as our gut tells us we need situation training or mentoring. To make the feeling better we need more guts which come from our structure of knowledge, skill, culture, emotion, intuition. All elements in our guts are the same as those in our working memory which compete the limited magical 7 capacity of our attention in our conscious. Every element appears in our conscious in sequence for our attention by our working habit and arranges its priority by our feeling of its urgency.        

The purpose of training and mentoring is to set up the working habit that will automatically response to every each situation naturally, effortlessly, efficiently and correctly. Anyone can see this ambition is too high for an OOW. The world is full of uncertainty and complexity. It is impossible to cover all scenarios in any or all training/mentoring sessions.

We have listed some scenarios of situations need to train the Master in seaman training center, Most Master cannot give a proper response what are their routines in these situations.

Scenarios: After a long day in Suez Canal transit southbound, vessel is sailing in Gulf of Suez. Captain had recessed after Junior OOW 20-24 watch in his cabin. Tired and smoothly rocked in the ripple wave inside the Gulf, the sleep is sound and sweet. In the middle of night, the telephone ringed from the bridge. He reluctantly picked up the phone and heard No other words than merely: “Cap..tain..”. He dropped the phone, jumped to his feet and found the torch left beside the trunk he slept, rushed to the Bridge and found:   

1. The visibility in the night is misty, smoggy, all clear, or foggy......
2. The traffic of other vessels are in what kinds and what quantities……. 
3. The ranges of the targets are close, far or in proximate range.   
4. Own vessel have no position fix, no rudder response, no main engine power, no electricity.
5. Own ship are about to/already in collision, grounding, firing, flooding or sinking.      

Master has to reply to himself and in front of the class, what are his working habits in these situations………

• Your attention direct by intuition: what is the decisive factor in current situation?
• What resources I need to support my situation recognized?
• What help I need to take care variables I cared?
• What is the option I had to exercise my short term/long term goal?
• What actions should be taken now to comply with ST/LT goal in this situation?

The situations could be influenced by the visibilities, the traffics, target ranges, own ship’s machinery status, nature of risks group……. And we need correct working habits for each situation by the multiple of each variable group; the numbers could be fifty or more procedures are required. The best practice of each convention can do to enhance the professional of Mariner are asking the standard procedures after the risk already took placed, fire fighting, flooding, grounding, oil pollution, boat drill..…. This is not a request for more procedures to be in place but to mention the fact of mariner’s work. It is impossible to ask for standard operation procedures (SOP) for every each situation, it will drown mariner by it completion. But we can ask a simple question to an engineer who received the phone call from the bridge to standby in engine control room with the reminder of vessel been grounded, what precaution will surface on his mind or what is his first priority right now? Most trainers will recall from the procedures he had trained by company requirement in SMS manuals to achieve the safety of the ship, crews and environment……. What about his own protection of the life threat companioned with the flooding while he diligently carries out his duty in engine room? The answer is “self inflating life jacket”once the flooding water reaching into engine room. “AHA”. You got it. We can ask ourself before this paragraph read did this simple thought have come across your mind.

Daily Practice of Situational Awareness: standing order and night order

It is impossible and unnecessary to have all situations to have its own specific SOP to cover the risk involved due to our limited capacities in brain and the training results have to take a long time to settle down our LT memories. As the new era approached, the people in the world are more concerned of why we do it not how we do it. How we do it is our procedures. Why we do it is case study. The procedure has it limitation as we are limited by the magical 7. Every each step in the procedure cannot give enough feeling/emotion/mood to memorize by our long term memories if we are not at the scene, like the collage student sitting in the class room. The learning of the knowledge have to strengthen by the reports students had drafted or each written/oral examine they had taken. After the semester, all knowledge only filed in his note book unless is recalled by next semester class for further application. It is normal for young OOW to make knowledge based mistakes and forgivable by the company management. Company made very clear rule Junior OOW watch is Master (or Chief Engineer) watch. Anything goes wrong in Junior Watch, Master (or  Chief Engineer) will take full responsibility. For a master or C/E, young OOW mistake will cost your job, pension or family funding. Most Captain and C/E did not complain or against this ruling once company put in its explicit policy of discipline. For this is the inherent regulation (culture) in maritime industrial to adopt this practice.         

We will prepare the Junior OOW to handle his daily job to perfection to our standard. This is the shipboard training objective. By doing so (Junior OOW takes care of the watch properly), ship’s management personal can have decent time to rest or take care of other errands on board. The way to make sure Junior OOW had possessed necessary procedural memories for each situation is to ask his direction of attention is correct or not. Due to human conscious limitation our attention must flow with different stage of each situation.       

The key components of each watch are identified in Master standing order and night order for each specific night passage enroute. This is our daily routine on the bridge/engine room. Ship board management must be make sure Junior OOW read again in each watch relieved.

Mental training / mentoring for Situational Awareness

Situations are impossible to practice even for an experienced seaman on board. For there is no procedures for everything, even we try to do the training/mentoring by our own guts. The result can turn out even more destructive than our imaginations by our nature instinct. The safe way to do situation awareness is by case study from every source available to us. To develop the situation awareness is to develop the feeling while the situation is changed and take proper actions to cope with it. The feeling needs first than correct actions required to make physical difference. These qualities of brain activities are not born with us. There are influenced by the structure of our knowledge, skill, culture, emotion, intuition.         

The knowledge, skill and culture are learnt from the society, the emotion is leant from our past experience, and the intuition is leant by our projection into the future. Nothing is nature but artificial cultivation piece by piece.   

From the case we studied, there is a story laid down before us. Everybody can give his theory of the cause and verified his own ideas of how to handle the situation. Every maritime authority has it own investigation report branch try to identify the key element of the incident and recommended actions to take during the emergency. These investigation reports are of great value to our situation awareness. 

(example of maritime accident report bodies)

Statutory situation awareness in SOLA and STCW?

The situation awareness is of preventive nature, not like purpose of exercise/drill to contend the accidents to avoid further ship/cargo damage and save human life. The situation awareness we need for routine works on the watch are to prevent major incident and accident. The major treats to a routine watch, for deck officer and pilot are collision and grounding.   From the ship’s operator point of view, the collisions and groundings cause more substantial damage to ship’s cargo/hull and personal injury on board, it also cause serious finance and reputation impact to the shipping line.

These situation awareness requirements of collision and grounding are also noticed by all maritime parties. In STCW 1995, collision risk are first addressed by the competence Use of Radar and ARPA to Maintain Safety of Navigation of Table A-II/1 of the STCW Code which required professional licensed mariners teaches the 5-day Automatic Radar Plotting Aids (ARPA) course. The course is conducted utilizing ARPA simulators, which replicate the actual controls and displays of an ARPA unit.

The course provides comprehensive training in the proper use of commercial marine ARPA units, theory, limitations, diagnosis of errors, effective communications between watch standers, voice radio communications, and zero visibility pilotage environments.

IN STCW 95, grounding risk are also addressed general training obligations relating to the use of ECDIS exist. This is indicated by Table A-II-1 of the Code where it is stated “ECDIS systems are considered to be included in the word charts.” The degree of knowledge and competency concerning the use of charts is explicitly defined within Table A-II-1 as requiring the navigational officer to posses “a thorough knowledge of and ability to use navigational charts and publications”. He must additionally show “evidence of skill and ability to prepare for and conduct a passage, including interpretation and applying information from charts”.

The amendments to SOLAS Chapter V Regulation 19 –Carriage Requirements for Shipborne Navigational Systems and Equipment came into effect on 1 January 2011 now clearly include ECDIS systems within the definition of nautical charts and publications with section 2.4 stating that “An Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) is also accepted as meeting the chart carriage requirements of this subparagraph.”

A new paragraph 2.10 further identifies a requirement for ships engaged on international voyages to be fitted with an ECDIS system under the implementation schedule.

These are the statutory requirement in ARPA/ECDIS fitting and training by SOLAS and STCW. As professional seaman, we all need the proper training and certificate of these equipments.

Official and industrial situation awareness in navigational watch?

Of the 1,647 collisions, groundings, contacts and near collisions that were reported to MAIB between 1994 and 2003, 66 accidents involving 75 vessels met the required criteria. Figures 1 to 6 show the distribution of these incidents by type, vessel type, daylight or darkness, visibility, diurnal and monthly distribution.

An initial broad review of the detailed data collected highlighted three principal areas of concern as follows:

Groundings and fatigue: A third of all the groundings involved a fatigued officer alone on the bridge at night.

Collisions and lookout: Two thirds of all the vessels involved in collisions were not keeping a proper lookout.

Safe manning and the role of the master: A third of all the accidents that occurred at night role of the master involved a sole watchkeeper on the bridge.

(MAIB bridge watchkeeping safety study July 2004)

In 1993 human error, whether by shore personnel or pilot, accounts for over 80% of property damage claims. In 1997, human error stands at 78%. No less than 45% of personal injury claims fall into the category of crew error, that is to say where a crewman injures himself or a fellow worker. Not surprisingly, P and I Club statistics reveal that pollution, property and collision claims are dominated by deck officer and pilot error. (ANALYSIS OF MAJOR CLAIMS, UK P and I Club 1997)

From the official and industry reports above, human error takes account for 80% of all incident/accident are mostly because of the limited human resources in coaster vessel which have to be dealt by MLC 2006 officially. To avoid the fatigue in our routine work will be discussed in “Task and workload” chapter later.  Let’s take a look of the human error in collision case where the term is “not keeping a proper lookout” and the cause of collision in the same report also state that

“Collisions should theoretically be avoided if every vessel abided by the International Rules for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea 1972, which came into force in 1977. It is therefore not surprising that these regulations were contravened to varying degrees, and in differing areas, in all 41 of the vessels involved in the 33 collisions included in this study. The most common contributory factors in all of the collisions were poor lookout and poor use of radar. It is of interest that 67% of the collisions were with fishing vessels (Figure 15). This highlights the need for the watchkeepers on merchant vessels to keep an especially good lookout for smaller vessels.

Even when fishing vessels were seen, it was often the case that action to avoid collision was not taken in sufficient time by OOWs. A frequent explanation given for this tardiness in taking action, was that fishing vessels’ movements were generally erratic, and there was an expectation that they would usually be manoeuvred to avoid a collision, albeit at a late stage. The collision statistics indicate that usually is not the same as always, and there is a need to apply the COLREGS on every occasion.” (MAIB bridge watchkeeping safety study July 2004)

Situation awareness needed on bridge first is to watch for the sign of physical fatigues, not only the OOW but also include ourself. The second is how we perceive the situation in grounding and collision?    

Human Element of situation awareness in navigational watch?

The official report had identified the software handicap cause of collision and grounding. The statutory requirement had also addressed on the hardware fitting requirement in fighting with collision and grounding. How is the human element working in between to perfectly blend the statutory hardware to meet the software challenges in human resource?

So, we have to go back to look at how we human sense the world. There is no mystery right now as we had gone through detail discussion of knowledge, skill, culture, emotion, intuition. “Comprehensive training in the proper use of commercial marine ARPA units, theory, limitations, diagnosis of errors, effective communications between watch standers, voice radio communications, and zero visibility pilotage environments.” All these categories of training are of knowledge base only. OOW will learn his skill in his later maritime service as a junior OOW with proper mentoring by his superior. What about the feeling that a collision risk is present and imminent? The feeling is the first thing of our situation awareness.

The only one that can stop the engine or change course to prevent a grounding or collision is OOW. If a ship is equipped with an AIS, it enables the man in charge of the ship, the OOW, to be the first one to benefit from the AIS and to get an improved situation awareness. The ARPA certified OOW can easily identify the collision risk by using of ARPA CPA reading and audible alarm (setting of CPA and TCPA limitation) signal heard by ears as situation awareness. These are reliable ARPA function for ocean going vessels over 500 gross tonnages. Over two third of collision case are involved with fishing vessel which are generally erratic and not maneuver to avoid the collision. The major problems of these fishing vessels are:

1. An adequate lookout was not maintained;

2. The watchkeepers all had a poor knowledge of the international collision regulations (COLREGS), and what to do to avoid a collision;

3. The crew didn”t understand that, under the COLREGS, a fishing vessel is only a fishing vessel when it is actually engaged in fishing;

4. The watchkeepers misinterpreted the information presented on the radar and didn”t understand the limitations of radar;

5. The fishing vessel did not have a radar reflector, which made it hard for the ship”s radar to detect it;

6. The skipper, frequently the only certified person on board, was fatigued;

7. The fishing vessel crew didn”t appreciate the ways that large ships operate; such as size limitations, ability to turn, limitations of the equipment and the number of people on the navigation bridge.( Australian Transport Safety Bureau)

The COLREGS are quite clear when it comes to keeping a proper lookout. The obligation to keep a good lookout when at sea is covered by Rule 5 and states:

“Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”

A lookout should be kept by visual and audio means, and by radar. The fact that a collision occurred indicates that the lookout on the ship or the fishing vessel, or both, was, for whatever reason, ineffective.

3.7 Clear weather practice (from Navigation: Use of Electronic Navigation Aids MCA MARINE GUIDANCE NOTE no. 379)

Radar should be used to complement visual observations in clear weather to assist assessment of whether risk of collision exists or is likely to develop. Radar provides accurate determination of range enabling appropriate action to be taken in sufficient time to avoid collision, taking into account the maneuvering capabilities of own ship.

It is important that watch-keepers should regularly practice using radar and the electronic plotting system in clear weather. This allows radar observations and the resulting electronic vectors to be checked visually. It will show up any misinterpretation of the radar display or misleading appraisal of the situation, which could be dangerous in restricted visibility. By keeping themselves familiar with the process of systematic radar observations, and comparing the relationship between radar and electronically plotted information and the actual situation, watchkeepers will be able to deal rapidly and competently with the problems which may confront them in restricted visibility. 

As we had discussed, no feeling and no action follow-up means no situation awareness. Although the COLREG as the bible for every OOW had clear state: The lookout is by sight and hearing as well as by all available means. In proportional ratio, we had read more articles to cover the proper use of ARPA/RADAR/AIS than visual. These Electric Navigation Aids are for all weather, but visual and audio lookout is for acceptable visibility only. For young cadet/OOW, his knowledge is driven by the examination he is taking to get the professional certificate. The vast quantity of Electric Navigation Aid techniques limitations and proper usage/training by STCW/SOLAS convention requirements had made his structure of situation awareness had serious tilted to Electrical Side. Young cadet/OOW can easily divert his main interest from the most direct and dominant lookout means by our visual. We have not seen any visual lookout training requirement in any convention or any learning objectives. Visual lookout training has no 5 days sessions, not even 5 hours. The teaching syllabus of visual lookout of target’s bearing and range are not included in COLREG, seamanship or ship handling textbook. There are no international acceptable standard of lookout practice can offer to young man.        

Cultivate situation awareness by Human Nature?

We as human are limited by our conscious ability of Magical 7. Any situation has variants more than 7 will need our working habit to provide the correct sequence to pay attention, to take care, to watch out and to make proper decision. OOW use all available Electrical Navigation Aids to help his situation awareness is nothing wrong. But the neglect of visual lookout knowledge and techniques are a major deficiency in situation awareness for a young man, and not forgivable to a Master. The main reason of this deficiency is we all forget the RADAR/ARPA/AIS all need few minutes proper tuning and few rounds of back/forth positive identification of the target before it data can be relied to determine the situation we were at the scene. This is a very time consuming process which only available in light traffic or approaching stage. While the collision risk are erratic and the target echo strength are weak and positive identification are difficult in fishing packs, the best trained OOW cannot work out the rituals needed in RADAR/ARPA/AIS operation procedures. In this time, the senior OOW or Master help will be needed. For a Master the reaction time from the moment he received the phone call from the bridge in the midnight to he can proper access the situation and make proper decision usually are very limited. The time ship travelled two ship’s length distance depend on his speed and ship’s size, time (T) = 2 SL (M) / speed ( M/T) as the grounding case in chapter 4 from position 2, 17.25.25 UTC (ship in correct rudder angle HARD STARBOARD) to position 3 17.26.29 UTC (ship in wrong rudder angle HARD PORT). Two ship lengths is the distance of unbreakable barrier in ship’s handling by all means. No matter what kind of engine speed and whichever side and magnitude rudder angle master had used, the vessel just going his own way.

The situation awareness from RADAR/ARPA/AIS is not available in the first instance by our training received that many factors have to ascertain while in the real world nothing is curtained. An experienced OOW have to develop the ability to recognize the danger by just one look, any minute lost will made the accident inevitable. If the threat of the risk are mainly in collision, our first priority is the target vessel’s range (Distance from our own vessel), especially the visual range indentified. Not CPA or ARPA warning of some target might not related to the situation of real danger one (this one may not acquired in ARPA yet).

The reason why we need target vessel’s distance (target range) is because the range decide what action we should take to avoid the collision. The target range also defined our obligations under the COLREG in three stages. In initial stage, 8 nautical miles away, both vessels are free to maneuver his course and speed. In second stage, about 8-4 NM, there will be stand on vessel to keep course/speed and give-way to take action to avoid the collision.

In last stage, less than 4 NM, both vessels have to use his judgment to best aid the avoidance action. The obligation varied in COLREG is well observed only the actual distance of each stage is not regulated. OOW have to use his own judgment which stage he is in.         

The actions to take to avoid the collision are defined by the distance available for the give-way vessel to execute his turn to give ample sea room for other vessel to safely pass.  Details discussions are illustrated in “Managing collision risk at sea 2007”.

Above are the reasons why we need the target range. The question comes again why we need visual range detection ability?  The reason is we human brain is much faster than any Electrical Navigation Aids. Today we have the RADAR using the radio wave and marine visual aid system using infra-red thermo detection; these echoes are further assisted by modern computer to calculate its speed/course/motion. These electrical aids are working like our rod cells in our eye peripheral sight only good at motion detection. The real texture information like what color it is, what shape it is, what visual signs not related with motion are all unknown or uncertain.       

For example: RANGE ESTIMATION by visual

HULL UP The ship is in from the horizon.

HULL DOWN The ship is over the horizon. Only a part of the superstructure can be seen, but the hull is not yet visible on the horizon.

ON THE HORIZON The waterline of the ship's hull appears to be on or near the horizon.

CLOSE ABOARD The contact reported is extremely close to own ship.

The only readily available reference point you can use when estimating ranges is the horizon. Knowing your height above the waterline will help you estimate ranges because the distance to the horizon varies with the height of the eye. (US NAVY lookout training book 2007)

Look at the picture we had here. Any one try to navigate by electrical aids will have a great difficulty. Did you see the red buoy on the starboard bow? What the distance it is? What the movement of the vessel within two degrees right to our foremast? No visible bow wave and stern wave track of it? Could it be the pilot boat waiting for us or just another vessel floating there? Does the barge on our starboard side closing in our route?

Every one of us could be overflowed by these data amounts verbally? Imaging you are the Master been summoned on bridge for help, what table you will attend is like gambling in casino. The table means the CRT display of each navigational aid: RADAR/ARPA/ECDIS/AIS . In the end we will need the ability to take the charge by the window with our bare eyes to guide our movement.

Proper setting and target identification may need some minutes to accomplish while the target of interest had not included in original target tracking plan. This is the real trouble. This is not improper lookout as the official report always referred. The reason is target outflow our work ability by electrical aids. The one did not have the ability to navigate by the visual clues is not a trained enough navigator.     

Situation Awareness aid by Human senses?

One well trained OOW in his visual awareness of the situation have it limitation which called inattention blindness in such a way that once we get focused on something, we don’t see anything else.

While our attention is on the crossing fast vessel, the barge vessel in the same bearing further behind may also under way in the anchorage which cannot be detected by RADAR for close range with other anchored vessel. Or the barge ahead may lost engine power and drift dead on the water. Many things could happen without been noticed by our eyes due to our conscious limited capacity of Magical 7. The degree of inattention blindness can vary from person to person. Research on the topic has shown that some people are better able to multi-detection, because they have better “working habit, the ability to focus attention when and where needed, and more than one thing at a time.” Similarly people who fail to see something right in front of them while they are focusing on something else have no working habit yet. If the OOW have no working habit, we cannot blame them for not seeing as this is our nature limitations in working ability. We have to cultivate working habit by training and mentoring. Before that, more completed navigational aids training will help his situation awareness as the machine has no problem of inattention blindness but echo immersion. It is back to the old saying” lookout with all means available”.

exercise/drill training and mentoring.

Working habit is the automatic program thoughts and behaviors in our working memory to help handle the complex tasks. The habit in any kind can help us in three ways:

1. Reduce the ration stress in recognizing the working environments.

2. Reduce the emotion burden together with the works.

3. Save the time in its applications.

Most of the time, we don’t know we have it or not until we are tested by questions or situations need us to react. Try and error is common to our initial learning process. If this is our professional skill, it has to be secured by proper training and mentoring. The drills and exercises are the test of our working habit. Following drill/exercise are carried out in regulated interval as appropriated to the SOLAS/MARPOL ruling:

Items / Interval

SOLAS drills

1.    Fire drill, abandon ship drill and rescue boat drill. Once a month (Within 30 days)

2.    Life boat/rescue boat launching in water. Once every three months (Within 90 days)

3.    Emergency steering drill. Once every three months (Within 90 days)

4.    Flooding drill. Once a year (Within 365 days)

SOPEP exercises (MARPOL Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency Plan)

(The following exercises shall be recorded on SOPEP)

1. Notification/alerting shall be carried out each time the ship is approaching a port or terminal except when quick succession port visits dictate.  Otherwise, remaining exercises shall be carried out one each per 12 months, as the Master considers most useful.  However, no single category will go unexercised for more than a 24-month period.

2. Pipeline leakage

3. Being towed

4. Tank overflow

5. Bunker transfer

6. Grounding

7. Fire & explosion

8. Collision

9. Touch bottom

10. Hull leakage

From the drill/exercise nature and practice, we can see there focus on emergent reaction while some accident/incident had happened. Just follow the standard operation procedures (SOP), nothing more and nothing less to save precious resources to save people life and properties damage. It is a process to transfer the SOP from the paper to LT memory of all seamen involved in the exercise/drill to form their correct working habit in any emergency identified. The exercise/drill times required by international convention are the minimum requirement in physical environment. Like the Pole Vault athlete before the jumping, we have to exercise in our mental to perfect our LT memory as a working habit. Shipboard management should enhance the skill of young OOW by oral questioning the next steps in each SOP.

END of Chapter 5