On the recordJuly 8, 2004
Ships coming into the United States today have on them transponders. The purpose of that is so those people ashore can find out where the ship is and have a better idea of where they are. As we speak, there are about 43,000 very large ships on our oceans--43,000. For them to come to the United States, one of the requirements is they have a transponder on them, like an airplane has, like the situation we had a few weeks ago where the plane was coming into National and the transponder was not working. I say to my friend from New York, even though those ships have transponders----
Source
govinfo.gov
