Your examiner asks: "In simple terms, what is the difference between intact stability and damage stability?"

A. Intact stability concerns the vessel's righting ability in its normal, undamaged condition across its loaded conditions. Damage stability concerns whether the vessel can survive — remain afloat with adequate residual stability — after one or more compartments have flooded following collision or grounding. A vessel can be perfectly satisfactory under intact stability criteria and still be required to meet a separate damage stability standard, because the two assess fundamentally different scenarios.

B. Intact and damage stability are the same calculation, simply renamed depending on which document the figures are recorded in.

C. Damage stability is only relevant to vessels that have actually been in a collision; it has no precalculated/anticipatory component.

D. Intact stability concerns flooding scenarios; damage stability concerns the vessel's normal seakeeping — the definitions are reversed from common usage.

A. Report it immediately to the bridge/Master — do not wait to "confirm" the problem alone — note the apparent quantity/rate of ingress if safely observable, avoid taking any action (e.g. opening further compartments to investigate) that could inadvertently worsen flooding or compromise watertight integrity elsewhere, and stand by for instructions while keeping the area under observation if it is safe to do so.

B. Attempt to fully diagnose and resolve the source of ingress alone before reporting, to avoid raising a false alarm.

C. No report is necessary unless the water level visibly rises during the time you happen to be observing it.

D. Open adjacent compartments immediately to inspect for similar flooding, before reporting the initial finding.

A. Damage stability standards scale with vessel size, type and the consequence of loss — larger vessels and those carrying passengers represent a greater potential loss of life and asset value if lost, and (generally) have more internal volume/length available to provide additional subdivision, so regulations require them to survive a more demanding flooding scenario (e.g. two or more compartments) rather than the less demanding standard that might apply to a smaller vessel.

B. Vessel size has no bearing on the number of compartments a damage stability standard requires the vessel to survive; the same fixed number applies to every ship regardless of size or passenger status.

C. Smaller vessels are required to survive more simultaneously flooded compartments than larger ones, since they have less reserve buoyancy.

D. Passenger-carrying status has no bearing on damage stability standards; only cargo-carrying capacity is relevant.