U.S. Coast Guard Publishes first Domestic Vessel Annual Report

December 12, 2018

Rear Admiral John P. Nadeau, Assistant Commandant for Prevention Policy, United States Coast Guard.

The Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance announced the release of the 2017 Domestic Vessel Annual Report, the first of its kind issued from the Coast Guard.

The report collates data from the Coast Guard’s Marine Information Safety and Law Enforcement (MISLE) database regarding vessel population, inspections conducted, and deficiencies issued for the 2017 calendar year.

In 2017, the Coast Guard’s fleet of responsibility contained 12,189 vessels with active Certificates of Inspection (COI). There were 905 Marine Inspectors (MI) assigned to field units who conducted 18,424 inspections. As this is the first annual report for the U.S. Flag fleet, 2017 will serve as a baseline to study trends, identify key performance indicators, and bring attention to issues in the fleet.

Since this report covers the 2017 calendar year, and the compliance date for implementation of towing vessels was July 20, 2018, the Coast Guard will include preliminary data for inspected towing vessels within the 2018 Domestic Annual Report.

If there are questions regarding any of the fleet data reported, points of contact are listed on the back page of this report.

The report includes a statement from Rear Admiral John P. Nadeau, Assistant Commandant for Prevention Policy, United States Coast Guard.

The report highlights for the first time, U.S. domestic fleet deficiencies, inspections, and marine casualty statistics and will serve as a baseline to study trends, identify key performance indicators, and bring attention to issues in the fleet.

A few key findings discussed in the report are:

Coast Guard marine inspectors conducted 18,424 inspections on 12,189 U.S. flag vessels;
During these inspections, 21,629 deficiencies were documented, which is an average of 1.77 deficiencies per vessel; and
The number of inspections and deficiencies have increased 7.5 percent and 3 percent respectively, over the last five years.

The following vessel populations are represented in this report: