The Marine Mammal Advisory Group is calling on the global sailing community to participate in an anonymous survey, documenting collisions at sea between sailing vessels and marine life.
The Marine Mammal Advisory Group is a coalition of stakeholders established to collaborate on the protection of biodiversity, and to explore solutions to collisions with marine life for the sailing and boating sector. Collisions with floating objects and marine animals are an unfortunate occurrence in the global sailing sector, with many reports encounters including marine megafauna and whales.
The organization is appealing to the global sailing and boating community to take part in the vital work of identifying collision hotspots by taking part in this survey.
Founded in 2022, the MMAG collaborates across the marine industry to advance technical innovations, improve risk assessments, encourage live reporting and citizen science, and foster education and outreach initiatives. According to the most recent data from the Marine strike log maintained by the MMAG, which collates reports from sources such as; the International Whale Commission, media reports, and one-to-one surveys from the sailing community, over 50 percent of all collisions reported result in damage to either the vessel and/or its crew, as well as possible injury or death to marine life.
While the sailing sector only represents a percentage of the annual global ship strikes, the scale of these incidents from the sailing sector largely goes unreported because, unlike the shipping sector, there is no requirement for systematic reporting for strikes at sea within the sailing world, so they often only appear in the news cycle when they impact a boat’s sporting performance.
Building the global strike log database is key to understanding where the hot spots are that need to be avoided. With a significant part of the input coming from one-on-one interviews with the sailing community, the MMAG is requesting all sailors who have experienced a collision or strike at sea to report their experience via the survey link.
Why report your experience?
- Protect marine life: Help identify high-risk areas to minimize harm to whales and other marine species we share the ocean with
- Improve crew safety: Your unique data supports safer sailing by reducing risks to crews and vessels
- Be part of something bigger: Be part of this international effort to gather critical collision data
- Raise awareness to find solutions: Help highlight the true scale of collisions in the sailing sector, often underreported.
“We’d like to thank in advance everyone who takes the time to complete this survey,” said Damian Foxall, professional offshore sailor, Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Marine Mammal Advisory Group. “Seafarers are the eyes and ears of the scientific community, by sharing our observations we build a better understanding of our impact on ocean life and can use this knowledge to inform better practices as we shift our role from being Ocean users to Ocean stewards.”
