Shanghai saw 24 maritime accidents last year

A total of 24 maritime accidents happened in Shanghai last year, involving 13 shipwrecks, six dead or missing and causing 104 million yuan ($16.7 million) in losses, the city's maritime administrative authority said on Monday.

Chen Xiaoguang, deputy director of the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration, said all of the figures fell considerably compared with 2011.

The number of missing and dead dropped 81.8 percent last year year-on-year, while losses decreased 45.3 percent year-on-year.

Chen said there is too much ship traffic in some areas of Shanghai's south channel, when ships are waiting for favorable tides, which causes some accidents.

"Some other accidents occurred due to poor conditions in our sheltered anchorages, which may cause some anchors to drag," said Chen, adding that illegal loads and bad weather may also have been behind some of the shipwrecks.

A total of 220 maritime search and rescue operations were carried out last year and 1,790 people were successfully rescued, putting the rescue success rate at 96.57 percent.

Chen said that unlike road traffic, the peak for water traffic appears to be earlier. By early Monday morning — the tenth day of this year's Spring Festival peak travel season — a total of 890,000 people had traveled on water in 5,845 ships.