BC North Coast · Hecate Strait & Dixon Entrance · 1995–2026 · real TSB data
marker size ∝ vessel length · white ring = engine failure
Over three decades, ferries, tugs, large cargo/container ships and the fishing fleet have had engine failures, groundings and other incidents in these waters, where a Hecate/Dixon storm can turn a disabled ship into a wreck. The Queen of the North (2006) sank here. Bright, white-ringed dots are engine/machinery failures. Click a marker for the vessel, conditions and TSB summary.
Real data. Plotted from the Transportation Safety Board MARSISdb public occurrence + vessel views (the two CSVs provided), filtered to the BC North Coast, 1995–2026, for ferry/passenger, tug, cargo-container and fishing vessels. The Queen of the North (2006 sinking) and Simushir (2014) are highlighted within the real data; the Lee Wang Zin (1979 — capsized in Dixon Entrance, largest regional spill before Exxon Valdez) predates the window and is added as a context marker; the Nathan E. Stewart (2016 fatigue grounding & ~110,000 L diesel spill near Bella Bella) is added as the modern route-risk benchmark. Dashed lines approximate the study-area boundaries.
How to read this map. These dots show where incidents happened, not a formal incident rate. The TSB cautions that marine-occurrence data have statistical limits — modest annual totals, year-to-year variability, evolving reporting definitions, and the fact that many occurrences are recorded but not independently investigated. Incidents naturally cluster where traffic is dense (harbours, ferry routes), so read the map as "these failures keep happening on this coast, in these exposed waters" — the point for route risk being that a disabled or grounded laden tanker here, hours from salvage, is far harder to contain than the same event in sheltered water. (Rate-per-transit normalization from AIS traffic is a planned enhancement — see the roadmap.)