Ship incident risk around the heritage areas of Tubbataha and Banc d’Arguin

• Presents general framework to estimate risk exposure of shipping activities.
• Risk due to shipping is expressed as incident probabilities and monetary values.
• Recently risk increased for both regions and nearly all ship types.
• Pollution risk of tankers increased by 25–60% and even more for the heritage sites.

Since the early 1990s, the International Maritime Organization has designated 14 Particular Sensitive Sea Areas that enjoy special protection because of their important attributes and vulnerability to potential harm by increasing shipping activities. The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization identified two new candidate sites, the Banc d’Arguin national park in West Africa and the Tubbataha Reef national park in South-East Asia. We present various risk measures for ships trading in the areas of interest. Using a combination of data, we find increasing risk of ships trading through West Africa and South-East Asia in general as well as close to both heritage regions, supporting recommendations for increased levels of protection.