Black Sea MoU: Ship detentions decreased in 2018

Key figures

During 2018, the BS MoU member Authorities conducted a total of 5,214 inspections, representing slight 2% increase as compared with 5,112 initial inspections in 2017.
The regional inspection rate is 72.33% which is 1.26 % increase as compared with 2017.
5,468 individual ships visited inspection ports in the Black Sea region in which 3,819 (69.84%) individual ships were inspected and 241 (6.31%) individual ships were detained.
The number of individual ships inspected in 2018 (3819) increased 3.0% compared with the number of individual ships inspected in 2017 (3,707) despite to 4.8% decrease of the individual ship visits in 2018 as compared with 5,216 individual ship visits in 2017.
The overall detention percentage in the region was 5.54% in 2017; in 2018 it decreased up to 5.33% as a per cent of inspections, rather than the number of individual ships inspected to take into account that many ships are detained more than once during any one year.
Regional detention rate (percentage of number of individual ships inspected) 6.31% is which is higher than 5.75% in 2017.
The number of ships detained in 2018 for deficiencies clearly hazardous to safety, health or environmental amounted to 278.
It compares with the number of detained 283 in 2017, 223 in 2016. Number of inspections increased 102 (2.0%), total number of detentions decreased 5 (1.7%) which resulted 0.21 % decease in detention percentage in 2018.

Inspection data by Flag

Inspections were carried out on ships registered under 80 flags.
The flag State with largest number of ships inspected in the region was Panama with 835 (16.01%) inspection followed by Malta with 533 (10.22%) and Marshall Islands with 496 (9.51%) which constitute 1,864 (35.75%) of total inspections.
In 2018, ships registered under 39 foreign flags were observed to have deficiencies sufficiently serious to impair the seaworthiness and warrant detention. High detention percentage observed Comoros (18.18%), followed by Tanzania (15.65%) and Togo (15.33%) flagged vessels.

Inspection data by Ship Type

The largest group of the ship inspected during 2018 were general cargo/multi purpose ships with 1,890 (36.2%) inspections; bulk carrier 1,850 (35.5%) and oil tanker 619 (11.9%) were also inspected which represent 83.6% of inspections
Majority of detained ships were type of general cargo/multi purpose ships with 164 (59.0%) detentions, bulk carriers with 66 (23.7%) detentions and oil tanker with 14 (5.0%) detentions, followed by chemical tanker with 3 (1.1%) detentions, which were accounted for 88.8 per cent of the total detentions.
Higher per cent of detentions were with Ro-Ro cargo ship (20.6%), general cargo/multi-purpose ships (8.7%), followed by livestock carrier (5.3%), and tugboat (3.6%) (number of inspections more than 10).

Inspection data by Deficiency

A total of 21,006 deficiencies were recorded during the port State control inspections in 2017.
Majority of the deficiencies found upon inspection in 2017 were related to safety of navigation (16.4%), life saving appliances (13.3%), fire safety measures (10.4%) and health protection, medical care, social security (9.1%). These four categories make up 49.2% of the total deficiencies found.
Number of ISM related detainable deficiencies were 544 which accounted for 2.54% of the deficiencies, 256 marine pollution MARPOL Annex I related deficiencies observed accounting 1.19% of the total deficiencies.
A total 948 detainable deficiencies and 46 RO related detainable deficiencies were recorded during the port State control inspections. 4.4% of total deficiencies in 2018 were detainable deficiencies, 4.8% of detainable deficiencies in 2018 were RO related.
Majority of the detainable deficiencies found upon inspections in 2018 were related to fire safety (14.5%), lifesaving appliances (14.3%), emergency system (14.0%) followed by safety of navigation (11.9%). These five categories make up 64.6% of the total detainable deficiencies found in 2018.
Majority of the RO related detainable deficiencies found upon inspection in 2018 were related to fire safety (26.1%), Structural Condition (23.9%), Emergency Systems (10.9%), safety of navigation (10.9%) and followed by ISM (8.7%). These five categories make up 80.4% of the total RO related detainable deficiencies found.

The following table depicts the top 5 detainable deficiencies for the 2016-2018 period:

MLC results

PSCOs from Bulgaria, Romania and the Russian Federation identified 2,734 deficiencies related to MLC 2006 issues. This represented 18.1% of the total deficiencies issued and equated to 1.0 deficiency per inspection.
Of the 653 detainable deficiencies 51 were related to MLC detainable deficiencies. This represented 23.2% of the total detainable deficiencies. Of the 208 detentions 40 (19.2%) were due to the MLC, 2006 related detainable deficiencies which resulted 1.46 detention percentage.