Clear Seas Study Assesses Shipping Risks in Canadian Waters AUTHORED BY
Clear Seas Centre for Responsible Marine Shipping
T
hose who don’t understand the past are often doomed to repeat it. While that saying is most often echoed by political leaders and philosophers, it could apply equally well to the risks associated with marine shipping.
ships. The types of commercial shipping vessels include various types of solid and liquid cargo ships and tugs. Fishing vessels (both commercial and non-commercial), government vessels, pleasure craft, and other types of vessels are not included.
Looking at the past to secure a safer operating environment of the future was the key to Clear Seas’ latest study to help build a safer marine shipping environment, which was built on two earlier studies – the first in partnership with the Canadian Council of Academies on Commercial Marine Shipping Accidents: Understanding the Risks in Canada – and the 2021 Maritime Commercial Incidents and Accidents (MCIA) project.
Ferries and cruise ships were included as a reference point for ship types that the wider public may find more accessible. Incidents involving small passenger vessels, like harbour passenger ferries, tour boats and non- ocean-going cruise ships, are excluded. For this project, people-related incidents and accidents, such as injury, loss of life, or instances where a person has gone overboard a vessel, are out of scope, since this work is not intended to analyze passenger and crew safety.
Those earlier undertakings revealed a gap that didn’t account for the volume of ship traffic and how it impacts the frequency of occurrences. The number of events needs to be given context by considering the volume of shipping to gain a balanced picture of risk from individual vessel types. Our latest report Assessing Shipping Risks in Canada (ASRC) fills that gap by creating statistics on historical occurrence rates for the different regions in Canada based on the volume of traffic.
After applying the same study area as the MCIA project, summarized vessel traffic data was obtained from Transport Canada in a spatial grid format, which was overlayed onto the study area. Traffic information was gathered for all the 50 km by 50 km grid cells that were partially or fully encompassed within the study area (Figure 1).
ClearSeas SeasDashboard DashboardLooks LooksatatMarine MarineIncidents Incidents Clear online dashboard developed Clear Cen-for AnAnonline dashboard developed by by thethe Clear SeasSeas Centre tre for Responsible Marine Shipping (Clear Seas) proResponsible Marine Shipping (Clear Seas) provides a comprevides a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind publicly available hensive, first-of-its-kind publicly available picture of marine picture incidents of marineand shipping incidents accidents in shipping accidents in andand around Canadian and around Canadian waters. To create the dashboard, waters. To create the dashboard, Clear Seas accessed mor Clear Seas accessed mor than 140,000 of events, vessthan 140,000 reports of vesssels involved reports in marine sels involved in marine events, which were filtered to which were filtered to create a spatial dataset of cargo ships, create a spatial dataset of cargo ships, tugboats, cruise tugboats, cruise ships and ferries involved in occurences inships and ferries involved in so occurences involving comvolving commerical shipping, fishing and government merical shipping, so fishing and government vessels as vessels as well as pleasure craft are not included. The dashwell as pleasure craft are not included. The dashboard board and the project's summary report are available here. and the project's summary report are available here. This new study covers a four-year span from January 2015 and ending December 2018, offering the longest overlap between the marine occurrence and vessel traffic datasets. Marine occurrences are relatively rare, so four years of data reduced inaccuracies produced by year-to-year variations in calculating the occurrence rates. The study looked at vessel traffic and marine occurrences involving only commercial shipping vessels, ferries, and cruise 6
www.americansalvage.org
Figure 1. Vessel traffic statistics obtained from a 50 km by 50 km grid within the project’s study area boundary// Estadísticas de tráfico de embarcaciones obtenidas de una cuadrícula de 50 km por 50 km dentro del límite del área de estudio del proyecto
