The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has banned the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier Wooyang Venus from Australian ports for 90 days after finding that its crew’s work and rest records had been deliberately falsified to hide excessive working hours, gCaptain reported.
The ban was issued under Section 246 of Australia’s Navigation Act 2012. It follows a port State control inspection in Newcastle on 29 October, triggered by a complaint under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC), which found that the ship’s records did not reflect the hours the crew actually worked.
Third detention in under three years
- August 2026: detained for failing to properly record or monitor seafarers’ work and rest hours.
- December 2023: detained after inspectors, responding to an International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) complaint, found poor-quality food, falsified working-hour records and evidence that the master had physically assaulted a seafarer.
- After the 2023 detention, the operator submitted a corrective plan covering crew repatriation, better food and extra training on work and rest hours, but similar problems surfaced again.
AMSA also cited repeated deficiencies and doubts about the owner’s and operator’s safety management systems.
Fatigue is a safety risk
Greg Witherall, AMSA’s Executive Director of Maritime Safety and Environmental Compliance, said falsified records pose serious risks because fatigue impairs judgement and raises the risk of collisions and groundings, and that the authority will act strongly where failures are serious or repeated. AMSA lists crewing and fatigue management as a key enforcement priority in its 2026–27 National Compliance Plan.
Under the MLC, seafarers are entitled to minimum rest periods, and accurate rest-hour records are one of the main ways port State inspectors check that crews are not overworked — a protection that matters to the many Bangladeshi seafarers serving on foreign-flagged ships.
Source: gCaptain, 3 November 2026, citing AMSA. Photo: representative image of a bulk carrier, not the Wooyang Venus.
