The aviation industry learned a hard lesson earlier this year regarding regulatory compliance. While the lessons learned from the incident are many, the common theme that should be taken away by the maritime industry is that an owner and/or operator is responsible for compliance regardless of what individual regulatory personnel may say, accept, or even put in writing. For maritime companies without a compliance program, it has become common practice to rely primarily upon the opinions of individual Coast Guard inspectors or commands regarding regulatory compliance issues, despite occasionally receiving inconsistent guidance. What is wrong with this strategy? In the future another inspector may enforce a regulation which wasn't previously enforced.