Introduction and purpose
Each year, AMSA receives several thousand notifications of marine incidents involving foreign-flagged vessels, regulated Australian vessels (RAVs) and domestic commercial vessels (DCVs).
This overview provides a summary analysis of marine incidents reported in the 2021 calendar year with trends from 2017-2021 for foreign-flagged vessels and RAVs1 and trends from 2019-2021 for DCVs2.
Analysis of marine incident data is used together with other safety data (e.g. inspection data) to support identification of focus areas for targeted compliance activities. Targeted activities for 2022-2023 are in the National Compliance Plan.
This summary overview is supported by a more detailed analyses in the Annual overview for marine incidents 2021 PDF2.75 MB with Appendix 1 containing a glossary and descriptions of classifications used throughout this report.
The annual incident report is not a complete overview and/or comprehensive technical analysis. Marine incident data alone does not provide enough evidence for the in-depth analysis required for the identification of safety issues – this requires a more holistic analyses of other safety data including inspection and investigation data with further supporting analyses. AMSA performs these analyses in the development of the National Compliance Plan.
Footnotes
1 Incident data for Australian commercial vessels for 2021 is reported against the certification status as either a RAV or a DCV at the time of the marine incident.
2 DCV incident reporting to AMSA commenced in July 2018 hence analyses limited to the 2019 – 2021 data.