A set of safeguarding measures is in place for vessels to protect the lives of passengers and crew members. The Kazu I tour boat’s multiple failures to follow these safety guidelines started even before it set out to sea off Hokkaido last month, according to an expert on maritime accidents.

Hidetoshi Saito, chairman of the Society of Water Rescue and Survival Research and professor of environmental engineering at the Nagaoka University of Technology, said the most consequential of all the safety breaches was to give the green light to the tour boat operations on the morning of April 23.

In the afternoon, the Kazu I, carrying 26 passengers and crew, had sunk in frigid waters off the western coast of the Shiretoko Peninsula.

One stipulation in the safety management code submitted to the government by Shiretoko Pleasure Boat, operator of the Kazu I, said the boat would not be put out to sea when waves are 1 meter high.

When the vessel left a port in Shari in eastern Hokkaido at 10 a.m., the waves were less than 1 meter high.

Japan’s legal safety regulations cannot force businesses to cancel boat tours if weather conditions at the time of departure are within the range of the safety management code.

But at 9:42 a.m., a weather advisory forecast waves up to 3 meters for later that day. A strong wind advisory had been issued earlier.

At an April 27 news conference, after several bodies of Kazu I passengers were found, Seiichi Katsurada, president of Shiretoko Pleasure Boat, explained that the boat set out under the condition that it would return if the sea became stormy.

Saito blasted Katsurada’s “conditional” approval of the operation as “impossible to accept.”

“As he was aware that the weather conditions could abruptly change that day, he should have immediately called off the tour,” Saito said.

He said a second failure in the safety net--securing a workable means of communication between the boat and the company and others on land--contributed to the tragedy.

The ham radio system at Shiretoko Pleasure Boat’s office did not work because the antenna was broken. A satellite phone for the Kazu I was also under repair.

Three days before the accident, Noriyuki Toyoda, captain of the Kazu I, obtained permission to use a mobile phone instead of the satellite phone from an organization that inspected the boat on behalf of the transport ministry.

When the disaster was unfolding, Toyoda was likely unable to use his mobile phone because the boat was beyond the carrier’s service area.

At 1:18 p.m., five minutes after the first SOS was sent to the Japan Coast Guard, an emergency call was made from a cellphone from the boat.

It is not clear who made the call, but it did not come from Toyoda’s phone, mobile phone data showed.

“Since the captain’s phone likely could not connect, he might have used a passenger’s phone or had somebody send an alert over that phone,” one of the investigators said.

A man who received a signal on ham radio from the Kazu I informed the Coast Guard of the emergency.

He said he had advised Toyoda via the radio to contact the Coast Guard through the phones of passengers or the other crew member that were in the service area.

The man, who works for another tour boat company, said he became aware of the crisis when his company’s ham radio caught a voice asking passengers aboard the Kazu I to don life jackets.

Saito said the Kazu I and the company failed in the crucial safety measure of securing a means of communication.

“It was essential for the captain to have constantly reported the boat’s location to his company, particularly given that the boat set off to sea despite the forecast for bad weather,” he said. “The company, for its part, should have assisted the captain in keeping him posted about the latest weather conditions.”

In principle, the captain has the final say regarding decisions concerning his ship. But any skipper can make a mistake.

“Various people should be mobilized to support the crew with their expertise and information to enhance the safety of the boat,” Saito said. “The tour operator lacked a sense of responsibility for protecting the lives of people on board.”

The Kazu I’s life-saving measures were also inadequate, Saito said.

When the boat was taking water shortly after 1 p.m., the sea temperature in the area was 2 to 3 degrees.

“In those conditions, a person’s life would be in danger 15 minutes after they were thrown into the sea with just a life jacket on,” Saito said.

Survival in the water is unlikely in such a cold region with only the life-saving apparatus required for small craft, like the Kazu I, under the existing law, he said.

The Kazu I was the only boat that headed out to sea from Shari for a sightseeing tour on April 23.

If boats from other tour operators had also set sail that day, they might have been able to rush to the area of the Kazu I’s sinking for rescue activities.

“It was wrong to allow the boat to set off alone at this time of the year in the first place,” Saito said. “That was the most crucial part of the safety net that should have been abided by.”

(This article was written by Natsuki Edogawa and Masanori Isobe.)