I don't know if this is the reason for your deck crew problems, but if you frequently ALT-TAB out of the game then their behavior will get faulty. If you want to change to desktop it's better to first save the game, ALT-TAB to desktop and then reload the game.
Else, I don't play at such a high realism so I don't know, but I know that the sonar man will not give you distances easily based on his listening.
Welcome to Subsim!
