Marine Casualties and Incident Reporting

IMO RESOLUTION MSC.255(84) (adopted on 16 May 2008),"CASUALTY INVESTIGATION CODE" (CIC), incorporating and building on the best practices in marine casualty and marine incident investigation, provides a common approach for Coastal and Flag States to adopt and conduct marine safety investigations on marine casualties and incidents.

According to the PART II of this Code, there is a mandatory requirement for notification of Flag State whenever a marine casualty, incident and near miss occurs. The Flag State of a ship, or ships, involved, shall notify other substantially "interested parties and States" as soon as is reasonably practicable.

In Portugal, GAMA is the "Maritime Safety Investigation Authority", as per 2.13 of the CIC, responsible for undertaking investigations in accordance with the IMO Casualty Investigation Code and EU Directive 2009/18 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

We invite you to read carefully our Bulletin 01-2023 regarding reporting requirements in the event of an accident or incident.

GAMA (the Portuguese Maritime Accident Investigation Office) and the Portuguese Administration (DGRM & MAR Registry), should be officially notified by submitting the Notification of Marine Casualty and Incident Form (duly completed) to the following email contacts:

To:

- GAMA, the Portuguese Maritime Accident Investigation Office: gama@gama.mm.gov.pt

- MAR Technical Commission : mar@madeira.gov.pt

- DGRM (Maritime Administration): marad@dgrm.mm.gov.pt

Cc:

- Euromar: maritime@eu-registry.com

GAMA will then classify the event and proceed with an investigation if appropriate. Even if an incident/casualty is not classified as a serious one later on, the reporting of the same will be considered as a positive factor towards the company and Flag’s statistics, and taken as evidence that the implemented system is working.