The National Transportation Safety Board released its Safer Seas Digest 2025 this week, a compendium of lessons drawn from 49 marine casualty investigations completed by the agency last year, covering capsizings, collisions, contacts with fixed objects, fires, floodings, groundings and machinery damage. The 136-page edition, which has more than tripled in size since the first digest was published in 2013, includes high-profile cases such as the containership Dali’s allision with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and the fire aboard the ro-ro/container vessel Grande Costa D’Avorio. “It is critical for owners, operators, mariners, and vessel designers to keep in mind the circumstances of accidents aboard similar vessels while reviewing their own operations,” the NTSB stated in the report.
NTSB investigators identified a set of recurring failure points that industry stakeholders should weigh against their own procedures, including maintenance execution, voyage planning, fire detection and containment, waterfront infrastructure assessment, watertight integrity, bank effect in restricted waterways, and crew fatigue and distraction. The digest also flags emerging risk areas such as the secure stowage and monitoring of lithium-ion batteries, mitigation of electrical power loss, and emergency planning and training, alongside enduring hazards like operating in strong currents or heavy weather and running machinery outside design parameters. The NTSB’s Office of Marine Safety, which investigates major casualties in U.S. waters and involving U.S.-flagged vessels worldwide, said the annual publication is intended to help mariners find their own lessons learned to avoid repeating past accidents.
Source: India Shipping News
