It's not just about less people either. It's about doing things smarter and better, said KMC Scott Bailey, a chief engineer on Healy. Less people, though, does mean more duties for everyone. It's a much smaller crew. Healy is the first Coast Guard ship on which all crew can regularly send and receive e-mails.
Pagers also make ship life easier.
Each person aboard has a pager. Before, when someone needed to contact someone else, it was over loudspeakers all over the ship - day or night. Now, pagers quietly and efficiently link crew members. Healy's birth was different from that of any other Coast Guard ship. Designed as an Arctic research platform, Healy is a science ship that happens to cut ice, rather than an icebreaker that happens to support science.