Ambassador Cruise Line to Install Automatic Man Overboard System
Ambassador Cruise Line, a UK-based company that operates three cruise ships (Ambience, Ambition and Renaissance) from regional ports across the UK, revealed yesterday in a press release that it will install what it calls an “advanced man overboard (MOB) detection system,” called ZOE, aboard the Ambition cruise ship. The ZOE system is designed to detect and track passengers and crew members who fall into the water during man overboard (MOB) incidents using a “combination of infrared and daylight cameras, sensors, and software.”
The MOB system was designed and manufactured by Zelim, an Edinburgh-based maritime safety innovator. The installation of the ZOE equipment is suppose to deliver “instantaneous detection and tracking of persons in the water” following MOB incidents. “There is now proven technology available that mitigates the risk of losing lives to MOB incidents, especially in rough seas and in hours of darkness,” according to a Zelim spokesperson.
The technology also recently passed Lloyd’s Register approval tests with a 98% MOB detection rate.
The Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) of 2010 requires passenger vessels operating out of U.S. ports “to integrate technology that can be used for detecting passengers who have fallen overboard.” There are very few cruise line operating ships out of U.S. ports which have automatic man overboard systems installed. Many companies, including all Royal Caribbean ships and every vessel owned by Carnival Corporation (nearly one hundred ships), have no MOB systems installed. Most of these companies unconvincingly claim that MOB systems are allegedly unreliable.
There have been 420 passengers and crew members who have gone overboard from cruise ships and ferries since 2000, according to leading cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein. There have been 170 people who have gone overboard from cruise ships owned by Carnival Corporation, 86 from Royal Caribbean / Celebrity Cruises / Silversea Cruises, 32 from Norwegian Cruise Line, 27 from MSC Cruises, and only 2 from Disney Cruises.
Only one person (a crew member) has gone overboard during an Ambassador cruise. Ison Dias, age 27, from Goa, India, went overboard from the Ambience last May. He is survived by parents who were reportedly living in the U.K., at the time of their son’s disappearance, where the Ambience is home-ported. He reportedly was last seen on CCTV video in the early morning of May 3, 2024 on an open deck of the cruise ship. There was a delay of around 7 hours between the time that he went overboard and when the ship turned around to retrace its path.
Mr. Dias’s disappearance is exactly the type of incidents which automatic MOB systems are designed to address. A prompt alert that he gone went overboard and a system which could track him in the water even at night could have resulted in a timely search and rescue. Without such a system, looking for a person who went into the sea at nighttime is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
There are currently no laws which require Ambassador to install automatic MOB systems because it sails only from U.K. and European ports. Only the U.S. has such a law (the CVSSA) requiring cruise lines operating out of U.S. ports to install such life-saving technology.
To our knowledge, only one European cruise line (MSC Cruises) has installed an automatic MOB system but only on only one MSC ship. In 2017, we reported that MSC Cruises announced that it had installed a state-of-the-art man overboard system on the MSC Meraviglia and was planning to deploy similar systems across its fleet of cruise ships.
MSC Cruises indicated that it developed an “intelligent video capturing and analysis system” in collaboration with “security technology experts, Bosch and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.” The Swiss-based cruise line announced that it has tested the new man overboard system on the company’s newest ship which debuted in June (2017). MSC reported that “through over 25,000 hours of video analysis, extensive software testing and continuous algorithmic updates, the system has now reached a confirmed accuracy level of 97%.”
All cruise ships operated by Disney Cruises have such systems.
All other cruise lines, such as Royal Caribbean / Celebrity Cruises and all Carnival Corporation-owned ships, refuse to install such reliable and effective MOB systems.
Kudos to Ambassador for investing in passenger and crew member safety, especially when there is no legal requirement to install such state-of-the-art technology in the first place.
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