Where is the Ship "El Faro"? - Floating Black Boxes Should Tell Us

WASHINGTON - Oct. 9, 2015 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 9, 2015):  Although largely overlooked in most media reports, a simple piece of existing technology known as floatable EPIRBs should have told us by now where the El Faro sank.

        Also, a simple upgrade of such existing devices would make it possible to also know why, says MIT-trained Professor John Banzhaf, who has two U.S. Patents and many technical papers to his credit.

        Ships are required to have on board EPIRBs [Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons], a technology that has been in use for decades in marine environments.  When activated, these devices send out an emergency distress signal, to search and rescue satellites, which indicates the identity of the caller.

        If linked  - as even small personal hand-held EPIRB devices now commonly are - to a GPS locator of the kind found in many cell phones, the devices will also provide their location with almost pinpoint accuracy, and also permit rescuers who subsequently arrive on the scene to hone in on its signal.

        "If all of this can be packed into a small hand-held device weighing only ounces, which can transmit your identity and location anywhere in the world for at least 24 hours, and is even waterproof and designed to float to the surface, there is no reason why a functioning shipboard EPIRB should not be able to do the same with a signal hundreds of times more powerful, and able to last for weeks if not for months.”

        “This is much better than a device sending out pings from a depth of 15,000 feet which can be detected only by craft closer than a few miles away searching a wide swath of ocean," says Banzhaf.

        Since EPIRBs designed for huge cargo ships can be hundreds if not thousands of times bigger and heavier than the tiny personalized hand-held EPIRBs used by hikers, there is no reason why they could not also contain data recorders - sometimes called "black boxes."

        These devices would store - and provide to authorities - detailed information about virtually everything that happened to the ship, and possibly even the last several hours of what was said on the bridge.

        Many EPIRBs designed for ocean use are designed to be "floatable," so that they are automatically released if the water pressure on them exceeds that found at a specified depth if the crew is not able to release them even earlier while the ship is sinking.

        Making it possible for rescuers to locate exactly where the ship sank, and to find almost immediately - floating on the surface - detailed information about what happened, would be far preferable to having authorities try to search thousands of square miles of ocean bottom listening for a faint ping, and then trying to recover this invaluable information from an ocean bottom 15,000 feet below, says Banzhaf.

        Similar automatically-ejecting floating black boxes capable of sending personalized emergency rescue signals to satellites, as well as a honing signal to rescue planes, and containing detailed data about the vehicle’s operation and the last several hours of cockpit conversations, could also be used to simply and very inexpensively provide information about lost planes like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, says Banzhaf.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/ @profbanzhaf