I gather that many larger ships often either have malfunctioning AIS or don’t have it turned on.
AIS is a system that pings identity and location to other ships, and can set off alarms to warn of impending collisions at sea.
Seems like it could be used as a homing signal for pirates.
It is, many people will disable it when near known pirate active areas
All commercial ships are required to be transmitting on AIS. The article doesn’t mention if this couple had AIS (send or receive) at all though. Typically sailors keep watch in shifts to spot potential collisions. By the sounds of it, they had a lot of miles under their belt.
If I had to guess, they had a mechanical failure or a collision with something else that caused them to take on water.
I say, let’s round up all orcas in the vicinity for questioning.
