Accidents at sea

With an average of 24 serious accidents per year, the Dutch section of the North Sea is referred to as a relatively safe sea, certainly when one considers the enormous amount of activity which takes place in the navigational lanes. In this region, 60 to 90 accidents occur annually which are so serious that help is requested by the Directorate North Sea.

The North Sea is one of the most intensively sailed seas in the world. To say nothing of the fisheries, suppliers for drilling platforms and use by the navy and recreation, 124,000 ship movements take place per year in these waters. That means that an average of 340 ships sail in the Dutch section of the North Sea at any arbitrary moment of the day. Navigational routes have been marked to decrease the chance of accidents.

Shipping accidents occur due to collisions (52%), strandings (18%), fire/explosions (9%), sinking (2%) and several less important happenings. Fishing vessels are involved in the most accidents in the North Sea, followed by cargo ships. Tankers and ships with liquid cargos are involved with less than 10% of the accidents at sea. However, materials are readily discharged into the marine environment should an accident occur with this last group. offshore installations also form a source of risks.

These accidents cause an average of three deaths per year and once every other year, there is a substantial amount of damage for the environment. In most of the incidents, an accident is caused by a combination of factors. In 65% of the cases, human failures are (partially) responsible; 50% of the time, technical sailing causes are relevant; 35% of the time, poor weather conditions play a role and in 20% of the time there is a question of deficiencies on the ship and/or in the cargo.

The chance that a ship has an accident in the Dutch section of the North Sea is 1 per 1700 trips. The chance of an oil disaster with more than 30,000 cubic meters of oil is once every fifty years. The chance of an oil disaster with more than 50,000 cubic meters of oil is once every 200 years. Losing control of the wheel occurs an average of 30 times per year in the North Sea. This ships are referred to as drifters. Drifters are dangerous in the navigational lanes and can collide with offshore platforms and offshore wind parks.

Summary of serious accidents

date	name	type	location	cause	nature/ environment
12-2003	Andinet	cargo ship	NW Texel	storm and improperly stowed cargo	loss of around 700 drums of heavily toxic Wolman salt
01-2003	Assi Euro Link		50 km NW Terschelling	collision	leakage bunker oil: many oil victims among seabirds
12-2002	Tricolor	auto carrier	English Channel	collision	leakage bunker oil: many oil victims among seabirds
12-2001	Sloman Traveller	chemical tanker	18 km N Vlieland	fire on board	chloride gasses in atmosphere
10-1998	Pallas	cargo ship	sandbank near Amrum	fire aboard	bunker oil in sea: many victims among seabirds
03-1994	Sherbro	container ship	English Channel	containers overboard	dangerous agricultural toxin Apron Plus on the beaches
03-1993	Mairbritt Terkol	chemical tanker	20 km N Vlieland		explosion of chemical tank
01-1993	Brear	oil tanker	Shetland Islands	collision with rocks after technical disturbance	85,000 tons of raw oil in sea: due to storm, relatively few victims among marine fauna
10-1992	Nordfrakt	cargo ship	10 km W Noordwijk	unknown	2 tons lead sulphide in sea
04-1992		oil tanker	English Channel	collision	loss of lots of palm oil; many victims among marine fauna
03-1992	Long Lin	oil tanker	near Zeebrugge	collision with Cast Muscox	lots of oil in sea
03-1992	Cast Muscox	bulk carrier	near Zeebrugge	collision with Long Lin	lots of oil in sea
1991	Clipper Confidence	bulk carrier		collision with Norgas	lots of oil in sea
1991	Norgas	chemical tanker		collision with Clipper Confidence	lots of oil in sea
1990	Rose Bay	oil tanker	English Channel	collision with fishing vessel	lots of oil in sea
1988	Anna Broere	chemical tanker	100 km W IJmuiden		leakage of hundrede of tons of Acryilonitril
1987	Borcea	bulk carrier	seaward of the Zeeland coast		leakage bunker oil
08-1984	Mont Louis	cargo ship	seaward of the Belgium coast	collision with ferry	loss of radioactive load
01-1984		cargo ship	Doggers- bank		loss of 67 barrels Dinoseb
1983	Vostosc II	cargo ship	near Vlissingen	collision with wreck	leakage bunker oil
12-1982	Erato	container ship	Wester- schelde	collision with Yumpa	lots of oil in sea
12-1982	Yumpa	container ship	Wester- schelde	collision with Erato	lots of oil in sea
1982	Katina	oil tanker	near Hook of Holland	collision with Pengall	lots of oil in sea
1982	Pengall	bulk carrier	near Hook of Holland	collision with Katina	lots of oil in sea
1982	Benetank	oil tanker	Wester- schelde	collision	lots of oil in sea
1981	Cristel Hermann	cargo ship	seaward of the Holland coast		loss of 60 barrels of hydrochloric acid
1975	Olympic Alliance		southern North Sea	collision	8000 tons oil in sea
1974		oil tanker	near IJmuiden		large oil slick, many victims among seabirds
1971	Elizabeth Knudsen	oil tanker		collision	100 tons oil in sea
1970	Pacific Glory	oil tanker	southern North Sea	collision	900 tons oil in sea
1969	Texaco Westminster	oil tanker		defects on board	500 tons oil in sea

Ship disasters in Europe but outside the North Sea

The worst disaster in recent years occurred outside of the North Sea in 2003, in Spain with the Prestige.

Maltese oil tanker Erika broke in half during a heavy storm 80 km off the coast of Brittany. Twelve thousand tons of extremely heavy fuel oil for electric power stations flowed out of the tanker, polluting 400 km of the French western coast and killing an estimated 300,000 birds. The disaster was caused by the poor state of maintenance of the ship, which was rented by Total-Fina.

Prevention of accidents in the Wadden Sea and North Sea

According to the Capacity Note 2006-2010 of Rijkswaterstaat, a disaster can occur statistically once every fifty years in which 15,000 tons of oil is spilled into the North Sea. An accident in the Wadden Sea can statistically occur once every 300 years, whereby 2200 tons of oil are spilled. In order to remove this possible pollution, Rijkswaterstaat possesses a cleaning capacity of 5000 cubic meters. In this Note, the ships which the department rents are available within four hours during the week and within eight hours in the weekend. Some ships have sweeping arms already on board, others are equipped with sweeping arms and other material that Rijkswaterstaat has in depots in various places. Aid ships with turning screens can increase the effectiveness of the sweeping arms immensely. Help from the air with the Coastguard airplane is essential.

It is not possible to clean up oil spills when there are high waves, which is the case one third of the time. For this reason, oil spills are cleaned up in England and other countries using chemicals which make the oil sink to the bottom. Because these chemicals are less damaging than in the past, this method is being considered in the Netherlands.

To decrease the chance of pollution in the Wadden Sea, the Management Plan for the Wadden Sea includes a number of regulations. In 1996, sea vessels must report themselves when in the entrance regions of the harbours and in the territorial sea. There was a requirement to report already in the Ems for ships larger than 40 meters and/or dangerous cargo on board.

The IMO is working on requiring ships carrying a certain amount of tonnage of environmentally dangerous cargo to use the deep water route at 80 kilometers north of Wadden Islands instead of the route 20 kilometers off the coast. This regulation is meant to prevent accidents with dangerous materials in coastal waters in particular.

Disaster plan for the North Sea

In the past, authorities sometimes closed harbours to 'incident ships', such as the Prestige and the Erika, whereby major environmental disasters were caused. The IMO and the EC have since devised regulations in order to decrease the consequences of such disasters. The IMO established guidelines on places of refuge, in which criteria have been described when a ship must be led to a harbour (place of refuge) in the case of an environmental disaster.

In the Netherlands, the Disaster Plan regulates a coordinating plan for the North Sea for combatting disasters and incidents on the North Sea. There are procedures for cooperation between the Coastguard center and other organizations and services. If an accident with a ship should occur whereby a serious environmental disaster threatens, the minister of Public Works has the authority to direct a ship to a place of refuge and take over command. Every harbour managed by the government is a potential place of refuge. The best place of refuge depends upon the situation.

European regulations

The demands ships must satisfy have been established on a European level. Ships are inspected in order to control whether they satisfy the demands. If that is not the case, then they end up on a black list and are refused in harbours. In order to increase the safety of ships even more, the European Commission presented the Erika-3 package, seven proposals that follow from earlier decisions for better hulls of tankers and larger punishments for neglectful shipping personnel. The first proposal is that Brussels wants to increase the responsibility of the ship owners. Presently, the owners are only partially responsible for disasters, whereby victims cannot always receive compensation for damage. Furthermore, ships must be insured, since some ships are completely uninsured. In addition, a black list must be made of ship owners that allow poorly maintained ships to sail. An information system has been set up in order to keep track of ships in Europe: harbours can keep others informed about the departure and destination of ships via the Safe Sea Net.