200431 Concerns over AIS

Concerns over AIS
MARS Report 200431

I have had serious concerns about the AIS systems since we had one fitted onboard our vessel last summer but had never considered airing these as I was unsure in which direction to go. Having just read MARS 200420 (April), I thought I would drop you a line.

My concerns are as follows:

1. A large number of vessels appear to have very limited information entered, basically just the ship MMSI number. No name, draft, length or vessel type. It would appear that units are being installed and there is no mandate for what would seem to be basic information to be programmed. Just a ship's name would be of great assistance, as I am confident that a large number of Deck Officers would not recognise their MMSI if it were used on VHF.
2. The system installed on here gives incorrect data, in that all ship MMSI numbers have ten digits, with a leading zero. For example, on the display we show as 074XXXXXXX (actual number disguised for confidentiality. Ed). This is misleading if we wish to contact another vessel via DSC. I raised the issue with the provider, who stated that they had not seen this before but on delving deeper, it would appear that this is a common problem with this model and one that has not been resolved after nearly a year of being installed. I am keeping my fingers crossed that new software will be supplied at the next refit.
3. I feel that these units should be incorporated as part of the Ship Radio Safety Certificate (where fitted) and that they should be subject to the Radio Survey. This would then resolve the issue of not being programmed correctly.

In general, the system is liked onboard and is found to be a useful tool, although one does wonder if one day the AIS assisted collision will take over from the RADAR assisted collision!!