Purpose of this report
This report provides an analysis of marine incidents reported in the 2022 calendar year with trends from 2019-20221 for Domestic Commercial Vessels (DCVs)2 and from 2018-2022 for foreign-flagged vessels and Regulated Australian Vessels (RAVs).
Marine incident data from this report in combination with other safety data including inspections and investigations data and further supporting research is used to identify safety issues. AMSA considers all this safety data in the development of the National Compliance Plan, where targeted activities to address identified safety issues for the 2023-2024 financial year are set out.
This report is not intended as a complete overview and/or comprehensive technical analysis.
Marine incident and safety concern reporting
Information on marine incident reporting is available on the AMSA website.3
Apart from marine incident reports AMSA also receives notifications relating to marine safety concerns which are processed and recorded in the same way as marine incidents. However, unlike marine incidents which are required to be reported by the master, owner/operator of a vessel, Vessel Traffic Services and Pilotage providers, marine safety concerns can be reported by anyone who observes an incident that may endanger, or if not corrected could endanger, the safety of a commercial vessel or persons on board a commercial vessel to AMSA.
Classification of marine incident reports and follow up investigations
AMSA classifies all reported marine incidents into one or more occurrence types4 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 the majority of reports received by AMSA.
In addition to classifying types of incidents based on what happened, AMSA reviews and classifies domestic commercial vessels (DCV) 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 – 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.
A list of acronyms and definitions as well as extra information on the classification used in marine incidents is available on the AMSA website.
Footnotes
1. DCVs operating under the Marine Safety (Domestic Commercial Vessel) National Law Act 2012 (the National Law) commenced marine incident reporting to AMSA in July 2018.
2. AMSA also publishes monthly updates of very serious and serious incidents for DCVs and monthly safety lessons briefs based on marine investigation reports which are intended to target owners, operators and crew.
3. See Marine incident reporting
4. 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).