The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has released its Marine Incident Annual Report 2024, which gives detailed insights into marine incidents across domestic commercial vessels, foreign-flagged ships and regulated Australian vessels.
This report covers marine incident trends from 2020 to 2024 and provides an evidence base to support ongoing safety and compliance efforts.
In 2024:
• 5,625 marine incidents reported (up 2.8% from 2023).
• Larger DCVs (12 m and over) made up nearly 70% of marine incident reports, despite comprising only 20.6% of the DCV fleet. Bulk carriers accounted for the most marine incidents among foreign-flagged vessels.
• 5 fatalities were reported across all vessel types.
• Over 500 reported injuries with 157 of these serious.
• Most serious crew injuries were linked to navigation (DCVs) or maintenance and cargo handling (RAVs/foreign-flagged vessels).
• Collisions, groundings, and propulsion or system failures were the most common marine incident types with engineering system failures rising across all vessel types.
• Person overboard incidents on DCVs dropped by 12.9%.
• Common contributing factors included poor lookout, equipment failures, and gaps in risk assessments or risk management procedures.
