ANNUAL OVERVIEW OF MARINE CASUALTIES AND INCIDENTS 2023
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- Category: Accidentes
- Published on Tuesday, 31 October 2023 07:09
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This publication presents statistics on marine casualties and incidents which involved ships flying the flag of one of the EU Member States, occurred within EU Member States’ territorial sea or internal waters as defined in UNCLOS, or involved substantial interests of EU Member States, as reported by Member States in the EU database for maritime incidents EMCIP (European Marine Casualty Information Platform).
In this document, EU and EU Member States are referring to the 27 EU Member States plus the EEA EFTA States (Iceland and Norway) to which the Directive applies. EU 27 is used explicitly when referring to the 27 EU Member States without the EEA EFTA States. The figures from EMCIP database cover the period from 1 st of January 2014 to 31st of December 2022. 2022 has been a positive year considering the reduction or stabilisation of most of the accident indicators, such as the number of occurrences, ships lost, fatalities or injuries.
After traffic reduction in 2020, due to COVID pandemic, traffic increased in 2021 and cruise ships and ferries activities started again, reaching pre-COVID levels in 2022. In 2022, 2,510 marine casualties and incidents were reported, representing a reduction of 182 marine casualties and incidents in comparison with the year 2021 and 84 marine casualties and incidents in comparison with the year 2020.
The total number of marine casualties and incidents reported in the period from 2014 to 2022 was 23,814 with an annual average of 2,646. The number of casualties and incidents is 5.1% under the annual average and under the average of 2,670 occurrences before the pandemic.
After a peak of 106 very serious casualties reported in 2018 and a total of 75 in 2019, the number of very serious marine casualties was 51 in 2020, 58 in 2021 and 44 in 2022, confirming the reduction in the trend. In 2022, the total number of ships involved in marine casualties and incidents was 2,701, decreasing 212 ships in comparison with 2021 and 94 ships in 2020. This decreasing trend applies to cargo ships and fishing vessels.
To draw objective comparisons between the different ship types, ratios between the number of marine casualties and incidents involving each ship type and its corresponding fleet size were calculated.
These ratios are called ship occurrence indicators (see Appendix 4) and show the number of marine casualties and incidents in one year per one thousand ships1 . The average ship occurrence indicator in the period from 2014 to 2022 was 115, with a maximum of 125 in 2019, a minimum of 101 in 2020 and 109 in 2022. Both passenger ships and cargo ships had the greater average ship occurrence indicators, 211 and 152 respectively.
Indicators in 2022 are stabilised in comparison with the previous year. Regarding service ships, this category had the lowest indicator, with an average of 44 over the period from 2014 to 2022.
Finally, the occurrence indicator about fishing vessels was 51 with an increase over the period from 2014 to 2022. From 2014 to 2022, ‘internal waters (port area and other)’ were the locations where more than half of the reported marine casualties and incidents took place, followed by ‘Territorial sea’ and ‘Open sea’. Data for 2022 present the same trends than data for the whole period from 2014 to 2022.2 From 2014 to 2022, 45.3% of the marine casualties and incidents took place while in port area, i.e., in departure, arrival and anchored or alongside, whereas the ‘En route (mid-water or transit)’ segment accounted for 44.0%.
Finally, 10.7% of the marine casualties and incidents happened in ‘Unknown’ voyage segments3 . EU waters in North Atlantic, with an average of 22.4% of the marine casualties and incidents, and EU waters in Mediterranean Sea, with an average of 18.0% of the marine casualties and incidents, were the geographical areas with the higher number of occurrences, with the exception of passenger ships where the greater number of occurrences in EU waters happened in the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea.
1 To calculate the occurrence indicator, the size of the fleet is limited to the data available, i.e., ships with IMO number, flying an EU 27 Flag and restricted to the following types: fishing vessels with a length overall above 15 meters, cargo ships, passenger ships and service ships. Accordingly, for consistency purposes, the number of marine casualties to calculate this indicator does not include all the casualties under the scope of Directive 2009/18/EC.
2 According to the established EMCIP taxonomy, navigational areas are catalogued as ‘Inland waters’, ‘Internal waters (port area and other)’, ‘Territorial sea’, ‘Open sea (within EEZ, outside EEZ and other)’ and ‘Other / unspecified’. They are not necessarily aligned with the definitions of international conventions. 3 EMCIP taxonomy considers the following voyage segments: ‘Anchored or alongside’, ‘Arrival’, ‘Departure’, ‘En route (mid-water or transit)’ and ‘Unknown’. ANNUAL OVERVIEW OF MARINE CASUALTIES AND INCIDENTS 2023 Page 9 of 66 After a decrease in the traffic density around Europe in 2020, more intense for passenger ships than for cargo ships and fishing vessels, traffic density values were recovered in 2021 and 2022.
EU Member States’ investigative bodies launched 1,090 investigations over the period from 2014 to 2022 and 909 safety investigation reports were made public.
In 2022, 79 investigations were reported to have been launched, meaning a decrease greater than 21.0% in comparison with the years from 2019 to 2021.
From 2014 to 2022, there was a total of 604 lives lost in 405 marine casualties. After a continuous decrease until 2017 when 45 fatalities were recorded, an increase up to 67 fatalities was recorded in 2019 followed by a new continuous decrease to 38 fatalities in 2022, which is the lowest value in the period under consideration. In 2022, 65.8% of the victims were crew members, lower than the 87.7% average of fatalities of crew members in the period from 2014 to 2022.
The main events resulting in fatalities in 2022 were ‘slipping / stumbling and fall’ for occurrences with persons and ‘fire / explosion’ for occurrences with ships. The main events resulting in fatalities from 2014 to 2022 were ‘slipping / stumbling and fall’ for occurrences with persons and ‘collision’ for occurrences with ships.
From 2014 to 2022, there was a total of 6,781 injuries in 5,941 marine casualties and incidents, the average of injuries in that period was 753 injuries per year.
There were 597 injuries in 2022, the lowest number of injuries per year in all the period under consideration. In 2022, 83.8% of the injured were crew members and 84.4% of the injured were crew members in the period from 2014 to 2022.
The main events resulting in injuries in 2022 were ‘loss of control’ for occurrences with persons and ‘loss of control - loss of propulsion power’ for occurrences with ships. The main events resulting in injuries from 2014 to 2022 were ‘slipping / stumbling and fall’ for occurrences with persons and ‘collision’ for occurrences with ships.
Fatalities and injuries indicators based on the number of persons on board for each person category (crew member, passenger or other) in the EU fleet were calculated.
The trends of these indicators for crew members and passengers show a decrease over the years, except for passengers, as in the total number of fatalities and injuries there was an increase in the number of injured passengers in 2022. In 2022, 6 ships were lost, 524 ships were damaged, 180 ships were considered unfit to proceed, 603 required shore assistance, 330 ships required towing, 17 ships were abandoned and there were 296 Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. All these figures mean a significative reduction in the consequences to ships, in comparison with previous years.
A significant decrease in the reported number of pollutions can be observed since 2019. In 2022, the total pollution was reduced, with less pollution to the air and a significant decrease of pollution by cargo. From the analysis conducted in safety investigations, it was determined that, from 2014 to 2022, 59.1% of accident events involved human action and 50.1% of the contributing factors were related to human behaviour.
Analysing both human action events and human behaviour contributing factors jointly, human element relates to 80.7% of the investigated marine casualties and incidents. These trends are common for all ship types.
Over the period from 2014 to 2022, the total number of safety recommendations issued, and actions taken reported was 2,488. 45.4% of the issued safety recommendations and actions taken were dealing with ship related procedures. Photo credit by MSIU (Malta) ANNUAL OVERVIEW OF MARINE CASUALTIES AND INCIDENTS
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