Purpose of this report

This report provides an analysis of marine incidents reported in the 2023 calendar year, along with trends from 2019-2023, for Domestic Commercial Vessels (DCVs),¹ foreign-flagged vessels and regulated Australian vessels (RAVs).

Marine incident data from this report combined with other safety data from inspections and investigations and further supporting research is used to identify safety issues. AMSA considers the findings of analysis from safety data in the development of the National Compliance Plan, which sets out targeted activities to address prioritised safety issues for the 2024-2025 financial year.

This report is not intended as a complete overview and/or comprehensive technical analysis.

Marine incident and safety concern reporting

Reporting is essential to maritime safety as it helps provide a more holistic picture of the risks affecting the industry. Information on marine incident reporting is available on the AMSA website.²

In addition to marine incident reports, AMSA receives notifications of marine safety concerns.  Marine safety concerns can be reported by anyone who observes an event or practice that may endanger, or if not corrected could endanger, the safety of a commercial vessel or persons on board a commercial vessel.

In 2023 reporting of marine safety concern increased by 3.6% (428 reports) from 2022 (413 reports).

Classification of marine incident reports and follow up investigations

AMSA classifies all reported marine incidents into one or more occurrence types³ to consistently describe what happened and help identify patterns and areas for further analyses.

The focus of this report is on consequence, technical and operational occurrence-types, and their sub-types as these comprise most reports received by AMSA.

In addition to classifying types of incidents based on what happened, AMSA reviews and classifies domestic commercial vessels (DCVs) investigation reports to describe how and why the incident occurred using a safety framework. Marine incidents are a result of many factors and underlying safety issues that often are not directly linked to the incident outcome – such as organisational issues. To capture underlying safety factors, AMSA developed and maintains a maritime safety framework based on research and data to classify investigation findings.

Footnotes

¹ AMSA publishes monthly updates of very serious and serious incidents for DCVs.

https://www.amsa.gov.au/vessels-operators/incident-reporting/2022-monthly-domestic-commercial-vessel-incident-reports and monthly safety lessons briefs based on marine investigation reports which are intended to target owners, operators and crew https://www.amsa.gov.au/marine-incid ent-reporting/annual-and-monthly-incident-publications/monthly-safety-lessons-domestic

² Marine incident reporting

³ Note that multiple occurrence types can apply to the same incident. For example, an incident may include more than one consequence (i.e., collision and injuries)

Trends in reporting

In 2023, AMSA received a total of 5456 marine incident reports from foreign-flagged vessels, regulated Australian vessels (RAVs) and domestic commercial vessels (DCVs) and 428 marine safety concerns.

Marine incident reporting in 2023 increased by 3.3% (5456 in 2023 compared to 5281 reports in 2022). Figure 1 shows the total marine incidents reported by commercial vessels operating within Australia’s maritime jurisdiction,¹ or in preparation to enter Australia’s maritime jurisdiction,¹ as well as the total number of marine safety concerns received between 2019 and 2023.

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Footnotes

¹ Whilst foreign-flagged vessels are required to report marine incidents to AMSA when they occur within Australian waters, AMSA often receives reports from foreign flagged vessels in all stages of their journey to or from Australian ports. Unless otherwise noted, incidents reported by foreign flagged vessels are not limited to Australian waters. 

Marine incident trends

AMSA received a total of 1125 marine incident reports involving 857 DCVs in 2023 which is an increase of 5.9% from 2022 (1062 reports) (Figure 2). There has been a 46.3% increase in the number of incident reports from DCVs since 2019 (767).

Figure 2: Trends in incident reporting – DCV’s. (2019-2023) 

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In 2023 (Figure 3),

• very serious incidents decreased from 8 in 2022 to 7 in 2023.  
• there was an increase of 65 (25.5%) serious incidents reported from 2022.

Figure 3 DCV incidents by severity (2019 - 2023)

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In 2023, the DCV incidents by severity (Figure 4, Table A1) shows:

• passenger vessels continue to demonstrate a good reporting culture in relation to all other classes of vessels. Passenger vessels which account for a relatively small proportion (9.01%) of the DCV fleet reported almost half (45.2%) of all DCV incidents in 2023.
• fishing vessels and hire & drive vessels continue to be under-represented in marine incident reporting. Fishing vessels which account for 27.16% of the DCV fleet reported 11.16% of all incidents in 2023. This outcome is consistent with 2022 data where fishing vessels reported 10.8% of all incidents. 
• fishing vessels reported 40.7% of serious incidents. This rate is 15.8% higher than the average rate of serious incidents reported across all vessel classes.
• hire & drive vessels which account for 13.86% of the DCV fleet reported 6.42% of all incidents in 2023.

Figure 4 Percentage of DCVs that reported at least one incident by vessel class (2023 )

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Figure 5 shows the percentage of DCV incident reporting by vessel length as a proportion of the DCV fleet for 2023. 

Passenger vessels carry more than 12 passengers and are called Class 1¹.

Non-Passenger vessels carry less than 12 passengers and are not either fishing or hire and drive vessels are called Class 2.

Fishing vessels are used for fishing operations and called Class 3.

Hire and Drive vessels are used by a hirer only for recreational purposes and are called Class 4.

The largest reporting group were vessels greater than 45m in length at 29.8% of reports.  This appears to be consistent with the reporting rate of passenger vessels (Figure 4), since large passenger vessels report more incidents proportional to the percentage of vessels in the fleet (4.62%).

Smaller vessels, such as those under 12m in length, make up only 4.7% of reported incidents, despite representing 35.3% of the DCV fleet.

Figure 5 Percentage of DCVs incidents reported by vessel length and as a percentage of the DCV fleet (2023)

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Consequences to people

Fatalities

In 2023 there were three operational-related fatalities associated with DCV vessel operations.

Figure 6: Fatalities by year and vessel class (2019-2023)

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Between 2019 and 2023, there were 13 operational-related fatalities on DCVs (9 crew and 2 passengers). Seven (63.6%) of these occurred on fishing vessels (Figure 6). Most fatalities between 2019 and 2023 occurred in Queensland (Figure 7).

Figure 7 Number of fatalities by State (2019-2023)

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In 2023, the fatality rate (the number of fatalities per 100,000 crew employed on DCVs) was 1.5. This remains lower than the five-year average annual fatality rate of 3.0 per 100,000 crew² and lower than the fatality rate for Agriculture, forestry & fishing and Transport postal & warehousing reported in 2022 (Table 1).

Table 1 Fatality rate per 100,000 crew employed on DCVs compared to similar industries⁵

Injuries

In 2023, 19.4% of incident reports on DCVs included an injury to a crew member or passenger (Table 2).  Of these, 37.4% resulted in at least one serious injury⁶ to a person (Figure 8).   

Table 2 Reported injuries to a crew member or passenger as a proportion of all reported incidents (2020-2023)

Figure 8 Injuries by severity (2023)0

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The total number of serious injuries reported to AMSA increased from 5.6% in 2022 to 8.3% in 2023 (Figure 9).  In 2023, 44.8% of serious injury incidents were reported by passenger operations, 36.1% were reported by non-passenger operations, 7.3% were reported by hire and drive operations, and 10.8% were reported by fishing operations.

Figure 9 Percentage of DCV incidents involving serious injuries by vessel class (2019-2023)

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In 2023, most crew injuries were associated with the control and navigation of the vessel (26 incidents) followed by weather and water conditions (22 incidents) and operational access (19%).  (Figure 10).

For 2023, passenger injuries were associated with weather and water conditions (23 incidents), operational access (20 incidents) and vessel control and navigation (18 incidents) (Figure 10). 

Figure 10 Activity associated with injury for crew and passenger, all vessel classes (2023)

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Figure 11 shows the person overboard incidents for DCVs for 2023, by vessel class for 2023 and showing life jacket status.  Out of the 79 incident reports:

• 37 incidents with person/s overboard wearing a life jacket.
• 28 persons overboard not wearing a life jacket and 14 where unknown if wearing a life jacket.
• 46 involved crew members overboard

Figure 11 Person overboard incidents showing life jacket status by vessel class (2023)

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Figure 12 shows the percentage of unintentional person overboard incidents by vessel length, and as a percentage of the DCV fleet. This graph shows the proportion of unintentional⁷ person overboard incidents compared to proportion of vessel sizes.

Figure 12 Proportion of DCV fleet and unintentional ⁷ person overboard incidents by vessel length (2023)

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Consequences to vessels

The three most frequently occurring consequences to DCVs in 2023 were contact with something other than a vessel (180 incidents), collisions (125 incidents), and groundings (104 incidents)(Figure 13).

 Figure 13 Vessel Consequence Categories by Incident Severity (2023)

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Figure 14 shows the trends in the top 3 vessel consequences.  The frequency of groundings has remained fairly constant, despite a peak in 2022. Collisions have trended downwards from 15.09% in 2019 to 10.70% in 2023.  Contacts with things other than another vessel have generally trended downwards from 15.09% in 2019 to 9.48% in 2023.

Figure 14 Trends in top 3 vessel consequences (2019-2023)

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The most frequently reported very serious and serious vessel consequences by vessel class in 2023 were (Table A5):

• Passenger:                  Contact (18.7%, 17 out of 91 consequences)
• Non-passenger:          Grounding (14.7%, 14 out of 95 consequences)
• Fishing:                       Flooding (14.3%, 9 out of 63 consequences)
• Hire and drive:            Collision (24.2%, 8 out of 33 consequences)

Shortfalls associated with lookout and collision avoidance were reported in 30.2% (101) of vessel consequence incidents, followed by vessel handling and loss of control in 23.1 % (77) and berthing and unberthing in 12.9% (43) (Figure15).

Figure 15 Top 10 Occurrence Types Associated with Incidents Involving Vessel Consequences (2023)

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Trends in Operational occurrence types

Over half of DCV marine incidents reported between 2019-2023 relate to the operation of the vessel. Most of the very serious/serious incidents were associated with vessel control and navigation, cargo handling, and operational access (Figure 16). 

Figure 16 Operational Occurrence Type by Incident Severity (2023)

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In 2023, 62.6% (369 out of 589) of incidents were associated with vessel control and navigation (Figure 16). 29.0% of these were categorised as serious. This is consistent with the 2019-2022 data, in which the 5 top operational issues for every vessel class had control and navigation operational failure at the top of the list (Table A6).  There was variance across vessel classes as to the second largest operational shortfall, being operational access (passenger and non-passenger vessel classes), cargo handling (fishing vessels) and communication (hire and drive).

In unpacking the sub-elements of vessel control and navigation, incident data between 2019-23, lookout and collision avoidance is the major operational occurrence type related to vessel control and navigation at 33.6% (560) of the 1665 incidents, while 32.7% (545) were associated with vessel handling and loss of control, and 11.1% (185) with berthing/unberthing (Figure 17).

Figure 17 Top 10 Operational occurrence types with sub-category (2019-23)

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Trends in Technical occurrence types

Figure 18 shows the trends in technical occurrence types between 2019-2023. In 2023 (80), there was a 73.9% increase in engineering system failures from 2022 (46).  Power, propulsion and steering failures have been the major occurrence in all years with a noticeable peak in 2021 (152) and 2022 (166), and a downward trend in 2023 (199).

Figure 18 Technical occurrence types by incident severity (2019-23)

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The majority of power, propulsion and steering failures in 2023 were main engine and/or gearing failures (50.4% (60 out of 119), followed by steering gear failure at 19.3% (23) (Figure 19).

Figure 19 Power, propulsion, and steering failure types (2023)

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Safety framework coding analysis

This section presents the findings from the safety framework coding of DCV investigation reports. The findings provide an understanding of safety issues and identifies if, and where, greater compliance focus needs to be applied.

Between 2020 and 2023, 240 DCV investigation reports were coded using the safety framework. A total of 641 safety factors were identified across the 240 investigation reports analysed⁸.

From the 240 investigations coded, the majority of personal and vessel consequences were crew injuries (12.5% (64)) followed by contacts (10.2% (52)), groundings (10.2% (52)) and collisions (9.2% (47) (Figure 20).

Figure 20 Most frequent consequence events from the 240 coded investigation reports (2020-2023)

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Aspects related to people at 24.6% (159), and internal organisational issues at 26.2% (169) continue to form the majority of safety factors (Figure 21).

Figure 21 Categorisation of primary safety factors identified from investigation reports (2020-2023).

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The analyses presented will focus on the three primary safety factors of concern, people, onboard condition, and organisational influences (internal).

People

People actions refer to observable behaviours such as decisions, actions and/or inaction by the crew that increased risk.

Of the people actions, 38.7% were related to deck, followed by navigation actions at 38.3% (98) and maintenance actions at 13.7% (35) (Figure 22). 

Deck Operations comprised shortfalls in using equipment (29.3% (29)), communicating and coordinating (23.3% (23)), assessing and planning (20.2% (20)), and monitoring/checking/documenting (19.2% (19)).

These included poor use of equipment such as winches and cranes, line handling, and vessel fixtures such as gas cookers. Examples of communication and coordinating factors include inability to hear instructions or warnings, failure to set lookouts, and failure to hand over critical information between shifts or crews.  Examples of poor assessing and planning include preparing to load cargo, insufficient risk assessment before undertaking work, and continuing to work beyond sunset in poor light.

Figure 22 Breakdown of People categories with a focus on deck operations (2020-2023)

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Onboard conditions

Onboard conditions refer to aspect onboard the vessel such as knowledge skills and experience, internal and external factors that influence performance and well-being that increase risk.

Most safety factors identified related to onboard conditions included knowledge, skills and experience, (40.2% (43)). This is followed by personal factors (32.7% (35)), task knowledge/skills, equipment knowledge/skills, and task experience (including recency of that experience) (Figure 23).

Knowledge skills and experience included lack of knowledge in the operation of key machinery and safety systems onboard the vessel and in performing key tasks such as anchoring or responding to emergencies.

Shortage of skilled and competent crew are associated with factors including pressure to complete tasks, high workload and fatigue.

Figure 23 Breakdown of Onboard conditions categories with a focus on Knowledge, skills, experience (2020-2023)

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Internal organisational influences

A significant portion of the risks to safety of vessels and crews reside at the organisational level.

Safety management system deficiencies comprise most of the internal organisational issues, at 64.4% (204), followed by people management at 21.5% (68).

Poor, lack of or ineffective risk assessments continue to present a major area of concern and remains a focus of AMSA’s National Compliance Plan.   Most safety management system issues are associated with shortfalls in the risk assessment (36.8% (75)) and safety procedures (35.3% (72)) (Figure 24 ).

Figure 24 Breakdown of internal organisational categories with a safety management processes (2020-2023)

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Footnotes

¹ NSCV part B contains the system for categorisation of vessels.

² The actual number of fatalities must be considered when interpreting the fatality rates for this data due to the difference the size of the respective workforces. As noted in Work-related traumatic injury fatalities Australia 2021by SafeWork Australia, fatality rates are sensitive to the number of people employed in the industry. In smaller industries that employ fewer employees (such as in the DCV fleet), a small variation in the number of fatalities produces an apparent larger variation in the fatality rate.

³Based on a calculated approximation of 66,000 crew engaged on domestic commercial vessels.

⁴2023 statistics from SWA have not been published at the time of writing.

⁵Safe Work Australia (SWA), Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities Australia, 2021, SWA, Government of Australia, 14 November 2022, accessed 6 June 2023.

https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/work-related-traumatic-injury-fatalities-australia-2021; SWA 2023 data not yet available at time of publication of this report.

⁶All incidents reporting serious operational injuries to crew or passengers are classified as serious.

⁷ An unintentional departure from the vessel into the water, as opposed to intentionally jumping overboard into the water.

⁸ Multiple safety framework codes may be applied to a single marine incident.

Marine incident trends

In 2023 AMSA received a total of 4061 reports of marine incidents from Foreign Flagged (FF) vessels. This represents a 5.6% increase from 2022 (3847 incidents).   6.6% (270) of all incidents in 2023 were classified as very serious or serious, which is an increase from 4.9% (190) in 2022 (Figure 25).

Figure 25 Marine incidents reported by severity (2019-2023)

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Consistent with port arrivals data¹ most marine incident reports from foreign flagged vessels in 2023 were from bulk carriers. Bulk carriers, which account for 53.8% of foreign flag arrivals, reported 60.4% of incidents in 2023 (Figure 26). Container vessels, which account for 15.5% of foreign flag arrivals, reported 14.7% of incidents in 2023.  Similarly, general cargo/multi-purpose vessels accounted for 6.7% of arrivals and reported 6.0% of incidents.

Figure 26 Proportion of foreign flag vessel incidents and vessel arrivals in 2023 by vessel type

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Consequences to people

Consequence refers to the impact or outcome of a marine incident, and may include consequences to the vessel, persons on the vessel, the environment, or infrastructure.  This section focuses on people consequences, including fatalities and injuries.

Fatalities

In 2023 there was one operational related seafarer fatality and three person overboard fatalities on foreign flagged vessels. There were no passenger fatalities reported in 2023.

Detailed reporting on vessel crew fatalities is contained in the Maritime Labour Convention Annual Report 2023 .²

Injuries

In 2023, a total of 286 injuries of crew and passengers were reported from RAVs (36) and foreign flag (250) vessels (Table 3). There were 93 passenger injuries for foreign flagged vessels, comprising 2.3% of incidents.  However, these injuries include:

• injuries from recreational activities (such as sport and entertainment),
• injuries from slips, trips and falls not attributable to access, operations or handling of the vessel,
• when a person deliberately threatens or harms another person onboard.

Table 3 Incidents that include a reported injury to a crew member or passenger, total and as a proportion of all incidents 2019-2023.

Most injuries were associated with maintenance activities (42.0% (63)) with 18.7% (28) of these being serious.  Cargo and stores handling was the next largest source of injuries at 24.7% (37), with the majority (22) of these being serious (Figure 27, Table A8).  

Figure 27 Tasks associated with crew injury by incident severity, FF, and RAV (2023)

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Persons overboard

In 2023, 10 persons overboard incidents were reported with 5 of these associated with the operation of the vessel. These involved:

• Two incidents in which persons fell into the water when transferring between a foreign flagged vessel and a pilot vessel.
• A crew member fell overboard while preparing the gangway.
• A spring line parted, knocking a crew member overboard.

Consequences to vessels

Vessel consequences are the impacts or outcomes to the vessel itself resulting from a marine incident, such as damage, disablement, system impairment or loss.  In 2023, 4.63% (188) of incidents reported involved a vessel consequence. 61 of these were serious.

Figure 29 shows the most frequently occurring vessel consequences between 2020 and 2023 by year. In 2023, contact with things other than another vessel (35) continues to make up most vessel consequences, followed by close quarter consequences at 22 incidents, although this consequence has fluctuated significantly between 2020 and 2023.

Figure 29 Top 6 vessel consequences, FF and RAV (2020-23)

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Figure 30 shows technical/operational failures associated with vessel consequence incidents by severity, for 2023.  Most failures attributable to vessel consequences were associated with cargo and stores handling (28.1% (102)), with 30.4% (31) of these incidents categorised as serious. 

Maintenance, the second highest consequence, was associated with 22.0% (80) of vessel consequences, with 42.5% of these incident types being serious and 1.3% (1) being very serious.

While power, propulsion and steering failures was associated with 14.0 % of vessel consequences, this issue continues to present a major concern to vessel safety.  

Figure 30 Technical/Operational failures associated with vessel consequence incidents by severity, FF and RAV (2023)

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Trends in Technical occurrence types

Figure 31 shows the most frequently technical occurrence types between 2019 and 2023. 

In 2023, vessel system failures (687) comprised the majority of technical occurrence types increasing by 3.0 % from 2022 (667).

This is followed by engineering systems with 652 technical occurrence type in 2023, representing an increase of 28.3% from 2022 (508). Power propulsion and steering included the third most frequent occurring technical failures in 2023 (646), declining by 2.6% from 2022 (663).

Figure 31 Top 6 technical occurrence types, FF and RAV (2019–2023)

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Figure 32 shows the top 10 failures in equipment associated with vessel systems, power, propulsion and steering, engineering systems, and access in 2023.

Vessel systems included ballast system related failures which occurred the most frequently (406 occurrences).  In terms of power, propulsion and steering, this graph indicates the relative frequency of occurrence of main engine/gearing and auxiliary engines/alternators compared to other equipment and machinery failures on board these vessels.

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Trends in Operational occurrence types

Figure 34 shows the most frequently occurring operational occurrence types between 2019 and 2023. 

In 2023, cargo and stores handling occurrences increased by 136.4% from 2022 (88 in 2022 to 208 in 2023). Vessel control and navigation was the second most frequent operational occurrence type, increasing by 24.5% from 102 in 2022 to 127 in 2023. 

This was followed by maintenance being third largest operational occurrence, increasing by 54%, from 73 in 2022 to 113 in 2023.

Communication related failures, while the fifth most common operational occurrence, experienced the greatest increase of 232.1% between 2022 (28) and 2023 (93).

Figure 34 Top 6 operational occurrence types, FF and RAV (2019–2023)

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Figure 35 shows the most frequent issues associated with operational occurrences for 2023. 31.7% (66) of the cargo handling incidents occurred during loading and unloading. 53.8% (50) of communication failures occurred during shipboard communications, 49.5% (46) of operational access incidents occurred while climbing or descending ladders and 33.9% (43) vessel control and navigation failures occurred during berthing and unberthing

Figure 35 Top 11 issues associated with Operational occurrence types, FF and RAV (2023)

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Footnotes

¹ Inspections Report 2022

² The MLC Annual 2023 report contains a detailed breakdown of seafarer fatalities on international commercial vessels in Australian waters including person overboard incidents.

Table A1 Distribution of incidents by severity in each vessel kind, DCV (2019-2023)

Table A2 Proportion of vessels reporting an incident by class and state, DCV 202 3.

Table A3. Incident reports by state and vessel class, DCV 2019-2023

Table A4 Person overboard incidents and POB life jacket status by vessel length and class, DCV (2022)¹

Table A5 Vessel consequence by vessel class, DCV (2023)

Table A6 Top 5 Operational and Technical incident circumstances by class, DCV (2019-2023)

Table A7 Proportion of vessel arrivals, reported marine incidents categorised by very serious and serious by vessel type, FF vessels (2023)

Table A8 Operational activity associated with crew injury by vessel type, FF and RAV (2023)

Table A9 Top 10 equipment failures associated with technical occurrences, FF and RAV (2020-2023)

Table A10 Top-3 technical failures by vessel type as proportion of all incidents, FF and RAV (2023)

Table A11 Persons overboard by vessel type, FF and RAV (2023)

SDASDF

Table A12 DCV fatalities by year, state and vessel class, (2018-2023)

¹ Unintentional POBs only.