Maritime incidents produce a paper trail across multiple regulatory systems. A collision, grounding, fire, or structural failure triggers mandatory reporting to the flag state, port state control, and in many jurisdictions the maritime casualty investigation authority. That documentation, when recovered and cross-referenced, provides a contemporaneous record of the event: what the vessel was doing, who was responsible, what damage occurred, and whether the subsequent account matches the initial reports. The challenge is not that the records do not exist — it is knowing where each one lives and how to retrieve it.
Use incident documentation methodology when reconstructing a collision, grounding, or casualty from open sources, when establishing the sequence of events before and after an incident, or when corroborating or challenging an operator's account of what occurred. A flag state casualty report, individually, reflects one jurisdiction's investigation. AIS replay, IMO filings, PSC records, and meteorological data, corroborated across sources, produce a documentary record that is substantially harder to contest.
MAR-006 sets out the methodology for recovering incident documentation, reconstructing event timelines, and corroborating maritime casualty records to evidentiary standard.
Six tooling sources, four OPSEC requirements, seven workflow steps, five false-positive patterns, five chain-of-custody requirements, six key queries.
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01
Required Tools
Six databases covering IMO filings, EMSA, AIS replay, and meteorological archives.
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02
OPSEC
Disclosure obligations and source protection in incident investigation.
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03
Workflow
Seven-step sequence from incident identification to timeline construction.
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04
False Positives
Five documentation gaps misread as deliberate concealment of incident facts.
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05
Chain of Custody
Five requirements for preserving incident records and timeline documentation.
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06
Key Queries
Six queries across IMO GISIS, EMSA EMCIP, and Fleetmon databases.
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