CHIRP and MARS Lessons Learned: The PPE Gap and the Pilot Who Over-Corrected

Confidential reporting only works if people actually use it — and this year's numbers say they are. CHIRP Maritime's 2025-26 Annual Digest logged 330 reports spanning commercial shipping, superyachts, fishing, pilotage, offshore installations, ports, search and rescue units, recreational vessels, and the so-called "shadow fleet." Two recent reports, one from CHIRP and one via the Nautical Institute's MARS scheme, are worth reading in full.

The PPE Gap Nobody Checks

A crew member was chipping paint on deck, wearing goggles, when a rust particle found a gap near the bridge of the nose and got into his eye. He didn't flush it immediately — he hoped it would work its way out on its own. It didn't. By the end of the shift, the particle was still there.

The lesson isn't "wear PPE" — he was already wearing it. It's that PPE fit matters as much as PPE presence, and that the instinct to wait and see is exactly backwards for eye contamination. Flush first, always, regardless of how minor it seems in the moment.

The Pilot Who Over-Corrected — Twice

A fully laden bulk carrier grounded twice in a tidal river after the pilot over-compensated for a port-side drift he expected but that didn't fully materialise. MARS reports exist precisely for cases like this: not equipment failure, not rule-breaking, just a human being who anticipated the wrong magnitude of correction and adjusted too far. It's a reminder that pilotage confidence — earned over years on a river — can still misjudge a specific set of conditions on a specific day.

Why This Matters Beyond the Two Cases

CHIRP and MARS exist because near misses and honest mistakes go unreported when the only outlet is a formal investigation. 330 reports in a year is a sign the system is working, not that the industry has more to worry about than usual — but only if crews keep submitting the reports that don't fit a tidy category.

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