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Comment by rhexs | Hacker News Reader

What kind of insurance policy a super yacht owner would have will cover something like this?

Can't speak to insurance, but fwiw the M/T tropical breeze has DWT of 750 [1], whereas Wikipedia considers 30,000 DWT to be on the smaller end [2], so this is likely a much smaller tanker than one would envision when one first reads the headline, and likely costs notably less than the $51 million asking price of the yacht [3], as Wikipedia says a 32,000 DWT tanker (40x the size of the one here) runs for about $43 million.

1. https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/TROPIC-BREEZE-IMO-89063... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Vessel_pricing 3. https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht-market-intelligence/...

When they said gas tanker instead of oil tanker, I assumed that this was a local fuel delivery boat, not an international shipping tanker. I guess the article doesn't make that clear, though. Maybe it's something that the audience in the Bahamas would be more familiar with so they didn't feel the need to explain further.

Marine Traffic has some pictures of the Tropic Breeze.[1] Pictures of a large oil tanker in the Jamaican Observer[2] are unrelated. The Tropic Breeze looked like a work boat with a big liquid natural gas tank on deck. Destination was Great Stirrup Cay, a 200+ acre island owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines and used as a stopping point for their cruise ships. The cruise line has a resort there.

Not yet clear if the collision happened in open ocean or maneuvering near an island.

[1] https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/shipid:3777...

[2] https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Bahamian_authorit...

Depends on the owner. If you're Larry Ellison rich, you'll place those types of assets under an operating corporation meant just for the purpose of managing eg your yachts and attempt to have it step in front of liability risk so they can't very easily go after Ellison's other $109 billion in personal wealth. That corporation will carry very substantial insurance policies for just such risks. It's obviously incredibly expensive to own & operate a super yacht.

This is frustrating because even a massive payout to insurance still doesn't cover the environmental externalities.

There should be a different set of government-imposed penalties for environmental damage resulting from negligence, essentially a probabilistic Pigouvian tax.

How much money, paid to whom, would negate the environmental damage caused by this accident?

It’s a good question. One answer could be “enough money to act as a deterrent” and “who cares, the govt I guess”.

EDIT: Could also do the student debt thing and have the fines pierce corporate veils and not be dismissible in bankruptcy.

Well nothing can negate an incident like this, but a lot can be done to mitigate the damage and disincentive this happening in the future. The government that has jurisdiction should heavily fine the person(s) responsible and direct the money towards the victims in the tanker and for environmental cleanup.

I suspect that additional incentives wouldn't have changed anyone's behavior here. Nobody involved wanted to crash.

Of course not. But the owner of the yacht and/or possibly the person who the owner hired to manage the yacht deemed that the expected loss due to their negligence wasn't big enough to warrant being not-negligent. Adding punitive "environmental fines" might tip the balance.

And how much will their premiums go up after an accident in which they were at fault?

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