State of the Fleet – A strategic overview of maritime safety in Australian waters

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has released its inaugural State of the Fleet overview, which showcases its regulatory interactions with the people and vessels that worked in Australian waters in 2022, and foreshadows forthcoming compliance priority areas.

AMSA is responsible for regulating safety on domestic commercial vessels, regulated Australian vessels, and foreign-flagged vessels operating to and from Australian ports, and through Australian waters.

AMSA Executive Director Operations Michael Drake said the authority’s regulated communities were incredibly diverse from one another, but also within themselves.

“Safety is important regardless of whether you operate a 3-metre tinny for commercial crabbing, or a 200-metre bulk carrier,” Mr Drake said.

“Despite the differences in vessels and operations, and the challenges that regulating safety on each of them presents, we have identified a number of issues and areas of concern that apply to the full range of vessels under our responsibility.

“Our inspection and incident analysis activities show us that planned maintenance, voyage planning and lookout, working conditions and safety behaviours, electrical safety and vessel-sourced pollution continue to be issues across these diverse regulated communities.

“We are a modern, data-driven regulator so we will use these insights to refine where and how we apply our finite compliance resources for the year to come.”

Fast facts from 2022:

• Inspections: 2,671 domestic commercial vessels, 2,405 foreign-flagged vessels and 95 regulated Australian vessels.
• Reported marine incidents: 1,054 involving domestic commercial vessels, 3,837 involving foreign-flagged vessels and 268 involving regulated Australian vessels.
• Maritime Labor Convention complaints received and followed-up: 261
• Certificates of competency new or renewal applications processed: 8,889 under National Law (domestic seafarers) and 4,319 Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers under the Navigation Act (international seafarers).
• Certificates of operations for domestic commercial vessels: 1,888 new or renewal applications processed.
• Certificates of survey for domestic commercial vessels: 1,201 new or renewal survey applications processed.

For more information, see:

• Inspections Annual Report 2022
• Maritime Labour Convention Annual Report 2022
• Marine Incident Annual Report 2022

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