AIS support

7000518 said:

stranded after a dive or a boat with a failed engine/electrics, ais info could allow you to make a decision re triggering a plb for local/international pickup or contacting service through inreach depending on urgency and which would get a quicker/more appropriate response

so what you think should happen?

You transmit something via inreach, ok , and then ? Who will receive it and how? And what will the one who received it do with the message?

Depends on situation, those closest to you and in the vicinity will know youre there to avoid hitting you at least, if its a distress call itll be relayed to every ship in the area then to coast guard, if weather is bad you may not get sat signal, if its choppy and youre in the water ais may not transmit far and so on,

PLB's already exist for ais/dsc such as nautilus and EPIRBS via cospas-sarsat but there is no nuance its just distress the other side dont know what issue is, its redundancy and options depending on nature of issue, non starting engine is not the same as a heart attack or man overboard etc

7000518 said:

Depends on situation, those closest to you and in the vicinity will know youre there to avoid hitting you at least,

how they will know where you are?

They have a vhf device to receive this info and you want transmit it via iridium on 1.6 GHz? How will the information you are transmitting arrive at the vhf radio devices of the ships in vicinity? Who will deliver it to their vhf receivers?

DMDSS has number of distress systems and those work together. AIS is an information system based on continuous broadcast by all ships on vhf. There are satellites which are able to receive the vhf signals, but they do not transmit anything back to the broadcasting station.