{"id":137740,"date":"2026-07-21T09:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T09:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/137740\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T09:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T09:01:15","slug":"canada-tsb-marine-accidents-rise-as-fatalities-fall-to-10-year-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/137740\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada TSB: Marine accidents rise as fatalities fall to 10-year low"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has released its 2025 Statistical Summary of Marine Transportation Occurrences, reporting an increase in marine accidents from the previous year, even as fatalities declined to their lowest level in a decade.<\/p>\n

The report, which uses transportation occurrence data to identify safety deficiencies and emerging risks, recorded 990 marine transportation occurrences in 2025, including 257 accidents, 733 incidents, and six fatalities.<\/p>\n

The 257 marine accidents mark an increase from 213 in 2024, though the total remains 4% below the 10-year average of 267. Shipping accidents\u2014such as vessels sinking, foundering, or capsizing\u2014accounted for 85% of all marine accidents, slightly above the decade average of 83%.<\/p>\n

The remaining 15% involved accidents aboard ships, including serious injuries or fatalities resulting from incidents such as falls overboard<\/a> or while boarding a vessel.<\/p>\n

According to Transport Canada, commercial activity involving Canadian non-fishing vessels over 15 gross tons reached 23.7 million commercial vessel-kilometres in 2025, an 11% increase over the 2015\u20132024 average. Despite the higher traffic, the rate of shipping accidents fell to 3.1 per million commercial vessel-kilometres, down from the 10-year average of 3.3.<\/p>\n

The report also recorded six marine transportation fatalities in 2025, down 50% from the 12 deaths reported in 2024 and well below the 10-year average of 15. Three of the fatalities were linked to shipping accidents, while the other three involved Canada\u2019s commercial fishing sector.<\/p>\n

The continued number of deaths in commercial fishing<\/a> means the industry remains on the TSB\u2019s Watchlist of key transportation safety concerns.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the TSB received 733 reports of marine transportation incidents in 2025, a 1% decrease from the previous year and 13% below the 10-year average. As in previous years, the vast majority (82%) involved the total failure of machinery or technical systems.<\/p>\n

Accidents<\/p>\n

Overview of accidents and casualties<\/p>\n

In 2025, 257 marine accidents were reported to the TSB, a higher number compared to the 2024 total of 213 but below the 10-year (2015 to 2024) average of 267. In 2025, the proportion of shipping accidents (as opposed to accidents aboard ship) was 85% of all marine accidents, slightly higher than the previous 10-year average proportion (83%).\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were 218 shipping accidents in 2025, which is more than the 2024 total of 183 but slightly less (2%) than the 2015 to 2024 average of 222. Fishing vessels were involved in 31% of all shipping accidents, which is the highest proportion among vessel types, followed by solid cargo vessels, involved in 23% of shipping accidents.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/a>Credit: Canada TSB<\/p>\n

Casualties<\/p>\n

In 2025, 6\u00a0marine fatalities were reported, down from the 12\u00a0fatalities reported in 2024, and below the annual average of 15 between 2015 and 2024. Of the 6\u00a0fatalities in 2025, 3 were the result of 2\u00a0shipping accidents, while the remaining 3\u00a0fatalities resulted from 3\u00a0accidents aboard ship.<\/p>\n

Of note, 2\u00a0shipping accident fatalities in 2025 and 1\u00a0fatality that ensued from an accident aboard ship occurred aboard commercial fishing vessels. Improving safety in the commercial fishing industry<\/a> is an ongoing concern of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.<\/p>\n

Serious injuries in 2025 totalled 45, up from 38 in 2024, but slightly below the annual average of 47 from 2015 to 2024. Of these 45 serious injuries, 37 (82%) resulted from accidents aboard ship, and 8 resulted from shipping accidents.<\/p>\n

Type of accident<\/p>\n

The most frequent types of shipping accidents in 2025 were collisions (28% of all accident types reported), grounding (25%) and fire\/explosion (19%). The total number of collisions (62) was 18% below the 10-year (2015-2024) average of 76, the number of groundings (55) was only 1% over the 10-year average of 54 and the number of fire\/explosion accidents (41) was 10% over the 10-year average of 37.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/a>Credit: Canada TSB
\nIncidents<\/p>\n

In 2025, 733 marine incidents were reported to the TSB, slightly down from the total of 737 in 2024 and below the annual 10-year (2015-2024) average of 842. Incidents in the Atlantic region (346) represented 47% of all marine incidents, followed by 32% (235) in the Central region, and 18% (135) in the Pacific region.<\/p>\n

The remaining 2% (17) of reported incidents occurred in foreign waters.<\/p>\n

The majority (82%) of reportable incidents involved the total failure of any machinery or technical system. The largest proportion of these incidents (54%) occurred in the Atlantic region, while the greatest proportion of incidents involving risk of collision (80%) occurred in the Central region.<\/p>\n

The types of vessel most often involved in total failure of any machinery or technical systems incidents in 2025 were fishing vessels (63%) and solid cargo vessels (18%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has released its 2025 Statistical Summary of Marine Transportation Occurrences, reporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,45704,45705,10346,3532],"class_list":["post-137740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-fatality-onboard","tag-maritime-safety","tag-reports","tag-tsb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}