Ask a charter captain when their EPIRB expires.
Watch them pause.
That pause is not because they do not care about safety. Charter captains care deeply about safety. The pause is because the EPIRB expiration date is stored in their memory alongside the fire extinguisher inspection date, the captain's license renewal date, the first aid certification date, the drug test compliance schedule, and 40 other things they are managing from inside their head while also running a boat and catching fish.
EPIRB registrations must be updated every two years with NOAA's National Distress and Response System. An EPIRB that fires in a real emergency and routes to an address or phone number from three years ago is not a minor compliance gap. It is a life-safety failure. NOAA has no mechanism to alert operators when their registration is approaching expiration. The captain is supposed to remember.
Fire extinguishers require an annual inspection and a 12-year hydrostatic pressure test. The dates are on a tag attached to the extinguisher. The last time most captains looked at that tag was during the inspection. USCG officers who board a vessel for a spot check pull the tags. Captains who have had the same extinguisher for several years and never checked the test date are operating with expired equipment on every trip without knowing it.
The captain's license itself renews every five years. First aid and CPR certification renews every two years. For captains operating vessels under a Certificate of Inspection, drug testing program compliance is an ongoing requirement with its own documentation trail. All of these deadlines run on different calendars and none of them send reminders.
For 2026 specifically, any captain planning to participate in Florida's Atlantic red snapper season needed to register with the FWC Atlantic For-Hire Reef Fish Registry before the season opened. This was a new requirement. FWC sent no direct notification to Florida's charter fleet. The captains who knew about it heard it through fishing news sites and dock conversations. The ones who missed it could not legally target red snapper during the season window.
The compliance calendar that solves this is not complicated. It is a shared document or a calendar with every deadline entered, every renewal date listed 90 days out with an alert, every inspection date logged with a follow-up reminder six months before the next one. SafetyCulture (also known as iAuditor) handles this well for operations that want a dedicated tool. A Google Calendar shared between captain and a shore contact works fine for simpler operations.
The goal is to never have the pause again. When your insurance agent or a USCG officer or an attorney asks you when the EPIRB was last registered, the answer should not come after a 10-second silence. It should be in a system somewhere that you or someone who works for you can look up in about 30 seconds.
That is a two-hour setup, one time.
Michelle Onizuka is co-founder and Systems Architect at Onizuka Studio. She builds automation and AI systems for small businesses — including marine & outdoor rec operations across Tampa Bay and beyond.