Jersey Coastguard publishes 2023 Annual Report

Jersey Coastguard has published its latest annual report, which shows that 2023 was another busy year.

During the year, Jersey Coastguard responded to 205 incidents, dealing with a variety of distress and emergency 999 calls. The number of incidents during 2023 was one fewer than 2022, the busiest year on record for Jersey Coastguard.

Vessel equipment failure accounted for nearly a quarter of all search and rescue (SAR) incidents (23%), with Jersey Coastguard coordinating SAR assets to assist. The second highest incident type was concern for welfare, at 13%, a 3% increase on 2022. This trend has also been noted across UK Coastguard stations.

St Helier VTS monitored 4,570 commercial vessels in and out of St Helier Harbour comparable to pre-pandemic levels and organised 464 acts of pilotage, an increase of 119 compared to 2022. There was also a significant increase in Crew Transfer Vessels using St Helier as a hub for the Saint Brieuc Offshore windfarm project.

Coastguard and VTS Manager, Dan Downey, said: “Last year was another busy year for our Watch Officers, with long spells of warm weather seeing many islanders and visitors taking to the sea and beaches, resulting in the high numbers of incidents.

“Drawing insights from trends we saw in 2022, we executed a year-long campaign aimed at highlighting sea safety messages. The impact of this campaign was tangible, for example, incidents of being cut off by tides decreased from 23 in 2022 to 13 in 2023.

“We are fortunate to have access to a vast network of search and rescue resources from neighbouring territories, which complement our own locally stationed assets. In 2023 there were large-scale multi-agency search and rescue incidents, enabling us to share expertise and resources with search and rescue partners in Jersey and France.”