Rosco-Poplar

On July 26, 2024, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) published the investigation on an incident in which the 'Rosco Poplar' came within 200 meters of grounding in the Great Barrier Reef, after a GPS unit onboard the ship began providing false information to the pilot and crew on board. On May 4, 2022, at 03.11 a.m. LT, the bulk carrier was transiting the Great Barrier Reef via Hydrographers Passage under the conduct of a coastal pilot. Upon suddenly noticing that a reef sector light was indicating red, the pilot ordered a course correction. This was followed almost immediately by the activation of an alert from the ship’s electronic navigational equipment indicating that the ship was passing less than 200 meters from Bond Reef (normal clearance was about 1,500 m). The ship’s course was corrected and the remaining pilotage was conducted uneventfully. The ATSB found that during the early stages of the pilotage, one of the ship’s 3 GPS units began outputting incorrect positional data, likely due to an antenna malfunction. Because the bridge navigational equipment, including the electronic chart display and information system (ECDIS), radars and automatic identification system (AIS), were receiving a single position input from the same GPS unit, the ship’s position was incorrectly displayed on all these systems. However, no alarms were triggered from the failure because the GPS unit incorrectly indicated that position accuracy was within acceptable limits. The investigation found that the pilot and bridge team solely relied on GPS positioning to monitor the ship’s progress and did not maintain a proper lookout through use of radar and visual observations. As a result, they did not identify that the position reported on the ECDIS units was incorrect and that the ship had deviated significantly from the planned track. Full report: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2022/mair/mo-2022-005

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