the pragmatist in me thinks the same chine
disagree on the pilot issue, we're not dealing with weekend warriors here, these are bulk carriers with professional crews and i would imagine very experienced captains in control. they should be well and truly able to thread their ship through a gap (that's as big as say the brisbane cbd to aspley) in a reef given the modern navigational aids they would have on board. even gps errors (assuming they're not using differential) aren't that bad.
something has obviously gone wrong and we shouldn't have to provide pilots. a powerful radar system to monitor movements however would be more suitable, it could be rigged to identify individual vessels and alarm when they stray too far from the centre of the channel, there would be technology currently available to do this. ie. air traffic control systems.