>According to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Marine Exchange of Alaska, which monitors ship traffic in Alaska, there was no distress call — just a general request for assistance.
As much as I wish bad things on Zuckerberg, this seems pretty clearly on the "rude but not illegal" side of things. Super-yachts are kinda by definition rude already, so this seems entirely expected.
I don't even know if this situation is intrinsically "rude." There's a lot more important context in this:
> “From my experience, I know that situations like this contain myriad details for the vessels involved, so the AIS (tracking) snippet you obtained only reveals one of those details,” he said by email. “I do know that Wilderness Legacy is an UnCruise vessel and is very familiar with Alaska waters, so that may have contributed to them rendering assistance quickly.”
Some rando skiff comes on with "hey we're out of gas in Randeaux Inlet" and the nearest vessel might not even be the best boat to render aid and might not even know the terrain well enough to provide real assistance without undue risk to themselves. Even with modern navionics, etc. The captain of the super yacht might go up to SE AK a couple of times... in their whole career? Maybe 10? Tops? Meanwhile the Wilderness Legacy is up there all the time - that's their bread and butter. While the captain of the super yacht is trying to find the skiff on the chart, the Wilderness Legacy might already know exactly where the skiff was and how to get there, if they could safely go there, etc.
Like, Zuck sucks, but... this isn't really his fault, Facebook's fault, or even the yacht crew's fault. Even if they heard the initial call for assistance, and even if the people crewing the yacht knew the area extremely well, there could be a whole host of other reasons why it would have been better for the Wilderness Legacy to respond.
The whole concept of this article is basically rage bait.
It's being drummed up to "the ship was in distress and this is illegal under maritime law" absolutely everywhere that I've seen.
Like this post. The "Ship in Distress" part of "Mark Zuckerberg's Yacht Refused to Help Ship in Distress" in the display text here is inaccurate, in a legally-significant way. (Was this the original headline text? I don't see any evidence of it, at least)
Clearly, the tone comes because the accused weren't guilty of the alleged crime (as you rightfully pointed out), and saying someone's behavior is expected to be bad isn't defending them.
Depending on the boat and the crew and the knowledge of the crew, it might have been more dangerous for them to help than the other boat in the area too.
As much as my gut instinct is "screw Zuck" the reality is "we don't really know the full picture, and the Wilderness Legacy knew what was up well enough to handle the problem so they did"
> In a statement, a spokesperson for the Meta founder said that “Mark and his family were not on board at the time of the incident,” the superyacht was using a different radio channel, and the skiff was not in distress. “By the time the crew reviewed the Coast Guard contact on a different radio channel from the one they were operating on, the assist was already underway,” the spokesperson said. “We’re grateful all parties are safe.”
This wouldn't just be an apparent breach of international maritime law, but it's also a US federal crime not to do so under 46 USC 2304 punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and/or 2 years in prison. Not sure how the flagging of Launchpad in the Marshall Islands affects it or not, but the captain could be held liable if the owner weren't such good buddies with the current regime.
It's true that small fixed fines not regularly reindexed to inflation don't matter much to the rich and their allies. That's why about half of European countries use structured fines instead, which might still be circumvented when the owner is far richer than the captain and can gift the amount. Perhaps some judges in structured fine jurisdictions have the discretion to adjust them to be so onerous that the fine ensures corrective behavior, which is the primary ostensible reason for fines and penalties of laws to begin with. At present though, there are many more things the Epstein class are able to get away with openly now than in the near recent past.
>According to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Marine Exchange of Alaska, which monitors ship traffic in Alaska, there was no distress call — just a general request for assistance.
As much as I wish bad things on Zuckerberg, this seems pretty clearly on the "rude but not illegal" side of things. Super-yachts are kinda by definition rude already, so this seems entirely expected.
> “From my experience, I know that situations like this contain myriad details for the vessels involved, so the AIS (tracking) snippet you obtained only reveals one of those details,” he said by email. “I do know that Wilderness Legacy is an UnCruise vessel and is very familiar with Alaska waters, so that may have contributed to them rendering assistance quickly.”
Some rando skiff comes on with "hey we're out of gas in Randeaux Inlet" and the nearest vessel might not even be the best boat to render aid and might not even know the terrain well enough to provide real assistance without undue risk to themselves. Even with modern navionics, etc. The captain of the super yacht might go up to SE AK a couple of times... in their whole career? Maybe 10? Tops? Meanwhile the Wilderness Legacy is up there all the time - that's their bread and butter. While the captain of the super yacht is trying to find the skiff on the chart, the Wilderness Legacy might already know exactly where the skiff was and how to get there, if they could safely go there, etc.
Like, Zuck sucks, but... this isn't really his fault, Facebook's fault, or even the yacht crew's fault. Even if they heard the initial call for assistance, and even if the people crewing the yacht knew the area extremely well, there could be a whole host of other reasons why it would have been better for the Wilderness Legacy to respond.
The whole concept of this article is basically rage bait.
Like this post. The "Ship in Distress" part of "Mark Zuckerberg's Yacht Refused to Help Ship in Distress" in the display text here is inaccurate, in a legally-significant way. (Was this the original headline text? I don't see any evidence of it, at least)
Or comments here, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49251495
The parent comment is just edgy pontification.
As much as my gut instinct is "screw Zuck" the reality is "we don't really know the full picture, and the Wilderness Legacy knew what was up well enough to handle the problem so they did"
Are sailors as busy meowing at one another as those pilots on guard frequency 121.5?