Dangerous seas

Read any maritime publication and you'll see sad stories of vessels being lost at sea.  Clay Maitland wrote about it, Tradewinds highlights the losses in their Casualties section, Lloyds List and The Maritime Executive also cover significant casualties at sea.  How many ships are lost at sea?  That's a good question.  Take a look at some of the ships lost in the last several weeks.

• JOLLY AMARANTO
• NORTH SPIRIT
• PHU TAN
• JIAN FU STAR- with a loss of 13 mariners
• NASCO DIAMOND- with a loss of 21 mariners
• HONG WEI- with a loss of 10 mariners

We're not in the business of figuring out how to stop these losses.  Amver is a rescue program.  The maritime community can be better prepared for these emergencies at sea by having a robust global search and rescue system.  There are many tools for search and rescue professionals.  Amver is one of them.  Enrolling in Amver is the first step in ensuring there are an adequate number of ships available to assist in maritime disasters.  The second step is for search and rescue authorities to actually request Amver data.

Please help us help others so the lives of the 44 mariners listed above were not lost in vain.

Photo credit: Fotolia