Flag-state notification thresholds after the 2024 MARPOL amendments
A working reference for masters and DPAs on when a marine casualty triggers mandatory reporting under Annex I, and how the sixteen flags we hold interpret it in practice.
The 2024 amendments to MARPOL Annex I clarified — and in several jurisdictions tightened — the threshold at which a marine incident constitutes a reportable casualty to the flag administration. This briefing collects, in one table, how the sixteen flag administrations under which OMCS Class holds recognitions have transposed those amendments into their own national instruments.
The high-level pattern is convergence towards a lower quantitative threshold and a broader qualitative one. Where a flag once required a spill of a defined tonnage, several now require reporting for any pollution event with the potential to become that spill. The consequence for the master is that the safe default has shifted from 'wait and see' to 'notify and record'.