Enough. It is incredible that ferries that look like cruise liners and not abras or those ramped squares in Hong Kong sink. No one seems to have done any research or made any effort in any country to improve safety standards.

More people die in ferry accidents then they do in air crashes.

Clearly, air passengers are more important and ferry passengers are common run of the mill folk. Look at the giant steps taken in air safety and then tiny non-steps taken in seagoing vessels where the single largest potentially criminal reason for tragedy is overloading and poor maintenance. Think of what happened to those kids who died

two days back texting as the ship began to tilt. Hundreds of them knowing they were going down. How many accidents have there been of aircraft with 500 people on board?

None. The only major +500 accident was a collision of two 747 Jumbo jets in the Canary islands on the ground.In comparison the toll on a ship can be 2000 souls.

And these ferry disasters are not such an uncommon occurrence. It happens far too often for comfort. And it happens in calm seas. And the world does sweet all about it.

None of the advanced nations have even begun to do their homework on safety and rescue operations. Everything in oceanic disasters is clumsy and ad hoc and this must stop.

A quote from the BBC epitomises this freaky 21st century state of the non-art. “A number of things can cause such a vessel to go down, from running aground on the ocean floor, to cargo shifting and capsizing the ship. Once the damage is done, ship officials must act quickly to evacuate passengers to avert a disaster, maritime experts say.

Millions of passengers take to the sea each year aboard ferries and most of the time, the vessels return them safely to port. But from the sinking of the South Korean ferry to the Italian cruise liner Costa

Concordia to the Titanic, disasters do occur. And when they do, the results can be tragic.”

That is putting it mildly. The consequences are horrific. From Canada (Queen of the North with 101 passengers in 2006) to the Thoman Aquinox in Cebu with 24 killed the list is painfully long. Yet, it does not

strike the same chord in the public mind as a plane falling out of the sky does. No one understands why this is so.

Ask yourselves. There were double the passengers on this ferry than on Flight 370. Yet, Flight 370, albeit because it hasn’t been found, has have front page for weeks. The ferry story will vanish in a couple of days. In some countries like Bangladesh the number of disasters don’t even get reported. Yet channel crossings have millions getting on board every year.

And the world simply stays in a 19th century mindset. The single largest reason for the roll over is usually poor cargo

controlling and placement, a leak in the vessel, lousy maintenance, overcrowding, tilting because everyone is on one side and occasionally, collision and bad weather, like real bad weather.

Frankly, it is time the maritime authorities of all coastal nations got together and reworked their safety code. This is just not acceptable.

Major ferry sinkings:

1986: Shamia ferry capsized and sank May 27 in a storm on a river in

Bangladesh, killing an estimated 500.

1987: Dona Paz ferry collided Dec. 20 in Philippines with oil tanker

Vector; resulting fire and sinking killed 4,341 in the world’s worst

peacetime maritime disaster.

1993: Neptune ferry sank Feb. 16 in Haiti, killing at least 500.

2000: Overcrowded Cahaya Bahari ferry sank June 29 in a storm off

Indonesia, killing nearly 500.

2002: Overloaded Le Joola ferry capsized Sept. 26 in Senegal, killing 1,863.

2003: Nazreen-1 ferry sank July 8 in a Bangladesh river, killing about 500.

2006: Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry sank Feb. 3 in the Red Sea, killing more than 1,000.

1996: Bukoba ferry hit a rock and capsized May 21 in Lake Victoria in Tanzania, killing up to 1,000 people aboard a ship certified to carry 430.

2008: Princess of the Stars ferry capsized and sank June 21 in a typhoon off the Philippines, killing about 700.