The EFFECTS OF COVID-19 ON MARITIME ACCIDENTS

Abstract

A few years ago, we experienced, worldwide, a pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, which had various effects, both physically, emotionally and mentally. During the pandemic, various measures were established to reduce the high contagion among people caused by the virus, restricting contact between people and their activity. Fishing was declared an essential activity and, therefore, could fully develop its commercial activity.

In this work we propose to analyze the effects that carrying out fishing activities may have had on maritime accidents in a context marked by uncertainty, the decrease in certain activities, and fear, emphasized by an extreme volume of information. and great media coverage. Under pre-pandemic conditions, the majority of serious maritime accidents in Spain were associated with fishing vessels, and we look here to see if there is an effect of the pandemic restrictions on the number and typology of maritime accidents.