Automated navigation safety check to blame for Coral Adventurer reef grounding – official report

• The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has released initial findings of its investigation into how Coral Adventurer became grounded on a coral reef.
• The incident happened about 100km from the coast of Papua New Guinea, leaving 80 passengers stranded for three days.
• Preliminary findings show the incident happened after navigation systems froze to perform a safety check, not giving the chief mate enough time to steer the ship back on course.

The investigation into Coral Adventurer’s grounding near Papua New Guinea has revealed that an automated freeze in the navigation system caused the ship to miss a planned turn, which then led to the ship running aground on a coral reef.

This resulted in passengers being stranded on board for three days as the ship remained stuck on a shallow reef. The ship sustained structural damage and was detained by the Australian Marine Safety Authority. Passengers were returned to Cairns, with the rest of their cruise cancelled.

There were 80 passengers onboard and 44 crew, for what would’ve been a 12-night cruise.

An investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau showed that the chief mate had attempted to adjust the ship’s route, but the navigation system froze in order to perform a safety check. This freezing of the navigation system meant the ship was going too fast to turn safely and the chief mate was unable to salvage the situation, even after switching to manual control.

The ship ended up travelling 2.5kn faster than what was planned and was 200 metres west of its planned course.

ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said: “At this point, in dark conditions and without navigational aids or lights ashore, the chief mate reported being unable to visually identify the surrounding topography.

“It is a very narrow waterway and the margin of errors, particularly in those types of waterways, is quite small.”

Mitchell says investigations will extend across the rest of Coral Expedition’s fleet: “We’ll review passage planning and the overall navigational procedures across the entire fleet that this operator has, and we’ll also look at the emergency response on the day of the grounding.”

The final report could take between 12 to 18 months to complete, and will also investigate the workload and schedule of the crew members.

“There’s a lot more work ahead of us when it comes to actually analysing the data and having a look a little bit closer look at all the processes and procedures that this company had in force and what went wrong.”

Coral Expedition also continues to be under investigation for the events that led to the death of Suzanne Rees, who died while on a shore excursion on a Coral Adventurer cruise.

It is unclear if the results of these investigations could be made public, but AMSA has hinted that it could offer new guidelines or recommendations for expedition cruise ships following the tragic incident.