Maritime Accidents and Incidents: Number, Types and Location - Desteia
Maritime Accidents and Incidents: Number, Types and Location
Maritime incidents are a common phenomenon in the world of logistics. In this essay, we quantify just how common they truly are.
Jose Luis Sabau
17 de febrero de 2025
Macro
Maritime incidents are the bread and butter of the logistics world. After a year like 2024, plagued with disruptions and unforeseen events, operators have grown accustomed to ships encountering problems at sea—be it a hurricane closing ports or pirates attacking cargo ships. The question, however, is how likely it is that any given vessel will be subject to an incident?
Our analysis—which we will examine further in this paper—suggests that around 2.61% of the global shipping fleet today was subject to at least one incident in the last decade.
But, let’s start with the basics. Ocean incidents, from flooding and collisions to fires and mechanical difficulties, are, indeed, extremely common. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has a thorough registry of all incidents over the last years which we used across this paper to determine the true magnitude of this phenomenon. Just how common are these incidents? Well, over the last decade (between 2015 and 2024) the IMO registered 2,935 incidents at sea. That comes down to about an incident every other day for the period examined—0.8 incidents per day.
We know that, as of 2024, the total number of vessels at sea was an estimate of 109,000—including non-cargo and cargo vessels alike. According to IMO data, the 2,935 incidents registered over the last decade involved 3,352 vessels—of which, 2,849 were unique vessels—suggesting there were, at most, 503 vessels with at least two incidents. This implies that, over the last decade, roughly 2.61% of vessels in the global fleet have suffered at least one accident.
Maritime Accidents by Severity
A map showing the location of all maritime incidents over the last decade.
Additionally, there does seem to be a tendency towards very severe incidents. In the pie chart below, we divided the total incidents by their severity. As the figure shows, 61.87% of all incidents in the examined period were considered “very serious marine casualties” by the IMO. These were followed by non-serious casualties (28.96%) and lower-level incidents (9.17%).
| Severity | % of Incidents |
|---|---|
| Very serious marine casualty | 61.87% |
| Marine incident | 9.17% |
| Marine casualty | 28.96% |
Maritime Incidents by Location
A pie chart showing the general location of all maritime incidents over the last decade.
| Location | % of Incidents |
|---|---|
| Open sea | 26.31% |
| Coastal waters | 24.87% |
| Port | 18.74% |
| Others | Various |
Maritime Incidents by Type
Maritime Incidents by Type (2015-2024)
| Type of Incident | Number of Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Contact - with fixed object | 139 |
| Grounding - while drifting | 85 |
| Occupational accident - breakage, bursting, splitting, fall or collapse of material agent | 84 |
| Occupational accident - loss of control of machine, means of transport or handling equipment | 64 |
| Others | Various |
Number of Maritime Incidents per Year
A line graph showing the number of maritime incidents per year between 2015 and 2024.
Number of Maritime Incidents per Month
A bar graph showing the total number of maritime incidents over the last decade by month.
Number of Maritime Incidents per Hour
A bar graph showing the total number of maritime incidents over the last decade by the hour in which they took place.
Number of Maritime Incident Investigation Reports by Country
A heat map showing the number of investigation reports filled by each country by the IMO between 2015 and 2024.
All the information above suggests that maritime incidents are not just common but are also complicated. They cannot be easily explained by a handful of theories, even though, at least in terms of time and location relative to port, they do follow some important patterns. These details should be taken into consideration by operators when planning routes or designing supply chains.