The FAQ's on this page have been collated following questions received via the Give Your Opinion link on the homepage of Equasis. Questions and comments submitted to Equasis via this link are reviewed regularly, and commonly occurring themes will be represented here and this page updated accordingly.

Last update: 01/07/2022

Registration in Equasis is free of charge, to register, please proceed as follows:

  1. Select the option "REGISTRATION" (available at the upper right corner of the Equasis website);
  2. Complete the mandatory fields of the registration form. Please note that you need a valid e-mail address to register and that it will be used as your user identifier. Therefore, it is impossible to register twice with the same email address (note that if you have lost your password, you can recover it). Don't forget to tick the captcha box and to answer to the questions asked if needed. I you can't complet this captcha you may click the button to try another captcha.
  3. Read carefully the terms and conditions of Equasis. If you agree with the terms, please, accept them. Otherwise you cannot use Equasis and the registration will stop at this point;
  4. After you complete the registration form and accept the terms and conditions, you will receive an e-mail with an activation link. You need to click the link to activate your Equasis account (the link opens an Equasis page in your browser). If you do not receive the e-mail after a few minutes, please check your junk or spam email folder.
  5. You are now registered and you can log-in using your email as the login and the password you have entered. If you forget your password in the future, you can use the "Lost your Password" feature which will send an email with instructions to recover it.

To login into Equasis, enter your e-mail and registered password in the fields where it is displayed “Access”.

A failing login can be due to:

  1. typing errors;
  2. capital letters;
  3. spaces; and
  4. recently changed password whereas an incorrect password is still saved in your browser.
    If this is the case, you should clean your browser history/cookies/saved passwords.

If the failing login persist, please contact the Equasis Technical Unit (equasis[at]developpement-durable.gouv.fr ) for further support.

You are automatic log-off after 45 minutes of inactivity, over consumption or for security purposes.
To continue using Equasis please try to login again.

An account is blocked when its activity has been considered "suspicious" due to the high number of ships or company you have consulted over a certain period of time. You should receive an email from Equasis confirming that this was the case.

First of all, make sure you are the only person using this account. Registration is free and each user should have his own account. Note also that the "Conditions of Registration" forbid using Equasis to download large quantities of data, for example to be used in another system.

Equasis does not hold personal information related to shipping and the only personal information that is held by the database is information pertaining to the set-up of an account which is only used to allow subsequent secure access to the Equasis website.

All your personal details given during the registration procedure are kept private. Equasis does not share personal user details with any third parties.

The personal information that is held by Equasis database is information pertaining to the set-up of an account. This information is only used to allow subsequent secure access to the Equasis website and to publish usage statistics of the website at an aggregated level (e.g. by country, type of users, etc).

If you have encountered a problem with a provider's external link, please report it to the Technical Unit by using the option "Report an Issue".

No. Equasis receives data from its data-providers to be published on the Equasis website only. The access to the website is free of charge, but most of the data remains the property of the data-providers. Therefore, fulfilling individual requests for processed data, handover of the data(base), composition of lists, either for remuneration or not then, fall out of our mandate. This limitation also prevents the creation of a web-service/API/hyperlink, to extract information from Equasis to be used by another website or an automated process.

All users of Equasis, at the time they register, need to accept the "Conditions of Registration". These conditions forbid the bulk-download of data from the website. Without prejudice of legal prosecution, Equasis can unilaterally block, temporarily or definitely, any user in case of a suspicious usage of Equasis.

If you require this type of service, you can contact a commercial provider of maritime information such as IHS Fairplay, Lloyds List Intelligence, Clarkson, AXS-Marine...

Yes, it is normal, there is a maximum number of ships and companies that you can have simultaneously in "My Equasis". The main purpose of Equasis is to access the information on a ship-by-ship or a company-by-company basis, this is not a tool to monitor large fleets. This feature to "follow" ships or companies is to be used when you are interested by a few ships/companies that you want to be able to quickly find again in the future, or for which you want to be informed when information has been added or modified in Equasis.

If you need to monitor large fleets, there are other commercial tools, with which Equasis does not compete (IHS Fairplay, Loyds List Intelligence, Clarkson, AXS-Marine, etc...).

Yes. Equasis provides ship historical data on the following characteristics: ship name, flag, owner and class. History is available when consulting a ship detail page, by clicking the option "History" in the sub-menu just below "Ship Search".

Equasis was not designed to be a ship search engine. Its purpose from the outset was to provide users information on ships that they know. Therefore, it was considered that three letters is a minimum input to search a specific ship.

"Reinstatement of the class": when the class of a ship becomes valid again after it was suspended (not withdrawn). Suspension happens when a required class survey is not performed at the due date or a condition of class is not dealt within the limit date (these are the most common reasons of suspension, but there are others);

"Class Reassigned": is the action performed by a class society when, after a series of operations, grants a new period of class to a unit that had the class withdrawn. Typical reasons of class withdrawal are the transfer of class (losing society withdraw and gaining society re-assign) or when the class is suspended for more than 6 months.

This information is not deemed to be "safety" related and therefore is not displayed on Equasis. Further technical information such as LOA, beam, draft etc. is available on various commercially operated websites.

Yes. This information can be retrieved from the WSDOnline hyperlink available in the company detail page.

Equasis is dedicated to helping improve quality shipping and safety at sea. Other websites exist that make ship photographs available. On Equasis, on some ship folder, you may find hyperlinks to photographs on our providers' websites.

For many new vessels currently under construction, Equasis already shows the yard name and number prior to the allocation of the ship's name. To be noted that this information is not available in every ship's name history.

The print or download of a PDF file can only be done for a single ship or company.

This type of interactive map can be found on other websites about maritime information. In general, the added value of these maps is to track where the ships currently are and where they are going to or coming from. This is not safety related and therefore not the purpose of Equasis to locate ships in real time.

However, Equasis has geographical information on the area of trade for ships. The purpose of this information is to give an overview of where the ship is usually trading. This background information potentially highlights other data available in Equasis, such as PSC inspections.

Equasis goal and aim is to improve quality shipping and safety at sea by enlarging the number of data-providers available in the website. PSC data has always been considered as one of the most valuable information sources and Equasis is in contact with the remaining PSC regime to discuss future collaboration.

Equasis receives data from 9 PSC regimes or "MoU" (Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control), namely:

  1. Paris MoU (North Atlantic)
  2. Tokyo MoU (Pacific/Asia)
  3. US Coast Guard (USA)
  4. Indian Ocean MoU (Indian Ocean)
  5. Viña del Mar MoU (South America)
  6. Mediterranean MoU (North Africa and Middle East)
  7. Caribbean MoU (Caribbean Sea)
  8. Black Sea MoU (Black Sea)
  9. Abuja MoU (West and Central Africa)

In total, there are ten PSC regimes worldwide, the other being the Riyadh MoU (Persian Gulf).

The Ship Risk Profile is a targeting tool for the PSC Officers of the Paris MoU to set a target frequency for inspection of ships calling in the region. This frequency can be an inspection every 6 months, every year or every second year.

The calculation is made by the Paris MoU, but is not transmited to Equasis as part of our agreement.

To be noted that on the Paris MoU website, there is a tool for users to calculate the Ship Risk Profile of a given ship. This calculation tool requires inputs and Equasis can be used to find them out.

Equasis has recognised acknowledge the problem of double reporting of PSC inspections by some port States who are members of more than one PSC MoU agreement. Equasis is not allowed to change the data it receives and displays; therefore, it has implemented a temporary measure on its website, common information is gathered on one line when two PSC share their data for a single inspection. Also, the ship performance indicator has been already changed to count the two detentions from such double inspections as one only. To change the company performance indicator the same way remains yet to be done.

The following Port states countries report to more than one PSC MoU:

The aim of Equasis is to provide factual and controlled information to decision makers in the maritime community and as such cannot comment on individual employment policies or provide a forum for such comments. Seafarers should address their comments and concerns as appropriate to either a PSC officer, the ITF or the ILO.

Equasis provides details of merchant ships of over than 100 GT. Yachts and naval craft are excluded. In addition, the site does not include inland waterways vessels which do not trade internationally.

Since 2018, Equasis has safety and environment information on over 25,000 Fishing Vessels.

No, this information is not available. Equasis currently has no data-provider that could provide this information.

Access to inspection reports by Chemical Distribution Institute (CDI) is already available on Equasis, but access is restricted to certain companies and individuals by prior agreement with CDI. Vetting inspections are conducted by private vetting organisations and at present this information is not available on Equasis.

Class related information on Equasis is not displayed in real-time but is subject to periodical reporting by the classification societies, normally weekly, but in some cases daily.

However, by clicking on the "Details" of a class certificates, Equasis users can access more detailed information for a particular ship directly on the classification society website.

There are 13 International Group of P&I Clubs providing data to Equasis. If no data concerning the P&I club of a ship is available on Equasis, it might be because it is not mentioned in any file of our suppliers.
You can find the list of Equasis data providers by clicking the option > About Equasis / Data providers / P&I Clubs and Insurance Companies.

Equasis does not hold information on maritime casualties / accidents / incidents.

For information on maritime casualties/accidents/incidents, it is advised to consult the Marine Casualties and Incidents module of the Global Integrated Shipping Information System (GISIS) on the IMO website as this data is unavailable on Equasis.

Since the 17th of December 2021, a New Account Management System has been released on Equasis.

An help document has been realised, to provide informations and advices to Equasis users:

About account management