Marine incident trends
In 2022 AMSA received a total of 4105 reports of marine incidents from Regulated Australian Vessels (RAV) and Foreign Flagged (FF) vessels. 268 of the reported marine incidents were from RAVs.15 5.6% (231) of all incidents reported were classified as very serious or serious.
There continues to be an increasing annual trend in the reporting of marine incidents since 2018 with 2022 showing an increase of 9.8% from 2021. This is a positive trend particularly as in 2022, there was a decrease of 2.2% in the proportion of very serious and serious incidents reported from 2021 (Figure 21).
Figure 21 Marine incidents reported by severity (2018-2022)
Consistent with port arrivals data16 most marine incident reports from foreign flagged vessels in 2022 were from bulk carriers. Bulk carriers which account for 54.0% of the foreign flag arrivals reported 65.2% (2502) of incidents in 2022, but only 48.4% (92) of very serious and serious incidents.17 Container vessels which account for 14.6% of the foreign flag arrivals reported 11.9% (458) of incidents in 2022, and 17.9% (34) of very serious and serious incidents. Similarly, general cargo/multi-purpose vessels accounted for 4.4% of arrivals, 4.2% (161) of incidents and 7.4% (14) of very serious and serious incidents (Figure 22, Table A7).
Figure 22 Proportion of foreign flag vessel incidents and vessel arrivals in 2022 by vessel type
Footnotes
15. The low number of incident reports compared to foreign-flagged vessels means that RAV data lacks the statistical power to support meaningful trend analysis; hence we have not included further analysis of RAVs.
17. It is not uncommon for bulk carriers to submit multiple reports of minor equipment and/or machinery defects or failures at the same time and such reports would often be captured as separate less serious incidents.