A close call at Puerto Azul raises questions about ship traffic coordination

The incident occurred on October 28 at approximately 14:30 local time, when the cargo vessel Esperanza del Mar, inbound from Oriente Moderno with a full load of containers, passed within sixty metres of the outbound freighter Marisol—a distance that professional mariners describe as uncomfortably close in a busy harbour. Neither ship struck the other, but the near-miss triggered an automatic alert in the port authority's vessel-traffic system and prompted an immediate review by the Federal Maritime Safety Inspectorate.

Captain Roberto Vázquez, who was piloting the Esperanza del Mar during the approach, said the incident resulted from a miscommunication about which vessel had priority in a narrow section of the harbour's outer channel. "I received a radio instruction to proceed, and I proceeded," Vázquez recalled in an interview. "But the pilot of the Marisol had received different guidance. For a moment, we were both in the same space." Both pilots are experienced mariners with decades of harbour work, and neither reported equipment failure or loss of visibility.

The near-miss has revived a long-standing debate in Costa Mar about the relationship between federal maritime law, set in Meridian, and the practical realities of a tropical port that handles three times the cargo volume it did five years ago. Tourism has grown, and so has the export trade in marine and forest products. The harbour, designed for a slower pace, now hosts container ships, fishing vessels, diving-charter boats, and the occasional cruise ship in a space where coordination depends on radio communication and the judgment of human pilots.