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Vessel Types and Lengths
Commercial and Recreational Vessel Incidents
In the six months to June, there were 309 incidents involving at least one commercial vessel and 463 incidents involving at least one recreational vessel. This represents 40% and 61% respectively of all incidents.
Of the 29 reported fatalities, 22 involved recreational vessels only, 2 involved commercial vessels only and 5 involved both recreational and commercial vessels. Recreational motorboats were the most common vessel type involved in fatalities, being involved in 83% of all fatalities. Commercial passenger vessels were the next largest category, being involved in 24% of all fatalities.
Of the 75 serious injuries, 48 involved recreational vessels only, 22 involved commercial vessels only and 5 were not known. Recreational motorboats were the most common vessel type involved in serious injuries, being involved in 47% of all serious injuries. The next largest categories were commercial passenger and commercial non-passenger vessels, being involved respectively in 12% and 11% of all serious injuries.
Vessel Lengths
Of the vessels involved in incidents for which a vessel length was recorded1 , the largest group involved vessels between 5m and 9.9m in length. These accounted for 38% of all vessels. This was followed by vessels less than 5m in length, accounting for 37% of all vessels.
The breakdown of vessel lengths differs between recreational and commercial vessels. In incidents involving recreational vessels, 84% of vessels were less than 10m in length. In incidents involving commercial vessels, only 28% of vessels were less than 10m in length. This suggests that in general, recreational vessel incidents involve smaller vessels while commercial vessel incidents involve larger vessels.
A breakdown of recreational and commercial vessels by vessel length grouping is shown below:
1 Many incidents lack information on the vessel lengths of the vessels involved due to forms not being fully completed. In addition, WA does not provide vessel lengths to the NMSC.
