10,000 Shipping Containers Lost At Sea Each Year

kkleiner writes "Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world's oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It's estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year. This month the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container that was lost in the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004. What's happened to the sunken shipment in the past seven years? It's become a warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor, providing a new habitat for species that might otherwise not be attracted to the area."

Comments

"Lost"

[Warbane]

I wonder how many of those 10,000 are really lost and how many are "lost."

Re:"Lost"

[e9th]

If I were the captain of this ship, I'd just dump the whole lot overboard and blame pirates.

Re:"Lost"

[rhook]

It's not that hard to offload cargo from on ship to another at sea, it's been done for hundreds of years.

Re:"Lost"

[longacre]

There's a whole season of "The Wire" about this very topic.

Re:"Lost"

[Nikker]

As someone who has worked unloading containers from overseas I have to say cooking books is fun. I've unloaded quite a few containers that came from Asia (China) that were not on skids but seemed to have made it the entire trip with boxes up to the top on both side but somehow empty in the middle, interesting to say the least.

Re:"Lost"

[Talderas]

The only issue with that is that it's only viable to be done with the topmost cargo containers. Remember these containers are stacked vertically. If the valuable stuff is at the bottom, you can't crack it open, loot it, and dump the container overboard without first dumping the containers above it to make it look like an accident.

Thus, you pay off someone to load the most valuable stuff on top.

Re:"Lost"

[EsbenMoseHansen]

It is probably for that reason that valuables are loaded under deck.

Re:"Lost"

[Threni]

And another 47 series of Lost.

Re:"Lost"

[petermgreen]

Some ships have onboard cranes that can lift containers onto smaller vessels, I saw them doing it on an episode of "salvage code red" (they were removing the containers to reduce weight and get the beached ship out)

Re:"Lost"

[snspdaarf]

I work in the freight business. Containers are designed to have external devices lock them together. Putting them in/on a ship is a complex process that is designed to limit the amount of shuffling of containers at each port. Interlocking containers like hay bales would slow the process down, costing the shipping line money.

Re:"Lost"

[sosume]

It's even easier to change the label on a container.

Not just aquatic habitats...

[sakura the mc]

But on land too!

http://containerhouse.info/

Re:100,000 sneakers in that container?

[Frequency Domain]

A smell like you wouldn't believe.

Similar idea, but on the surface

[GodfatherofSoul]

I watched a documentary that suggested that artificial "floating reefs" be set out on the open ocean where biological deserts have formed to establish this type of habitat. The idea came from all the sea life attracted to the shelter of flotsom.

I'm not a biologist, but I am curious if these open ocean deserts are man made or just nature. Hard to imagine the latter from what I've read in historical accounts of the oceans.

Re:Similar idea, but on the surface

[willy_me]

I'm not a biologist, but I am curious if these open ocean deserts are man made or just nature.

They will most likely be naturally occurring "deserts". I know that some sea cucumbers are protandric - they can change gender if required. I guess when traversing the sea floor it can take a long time to come across another sea cucumber. So when this happens, and they are both of the same gender, one changes gender allowing them to procreate. This quality would not have evolved without large desert like expanses in the ocean.

Current human activities do not appear to be effecting the deserts so much as they are effecting the ocean's oases - the coral reefs. Higher temperatures, increased CO2 levels, and fishing are all destroying these ecological hotspots.

Re:Similar idea, but on the surface

[LWATCDR]

Yes they are natural and have been for a long time. They are not lifeless just have a lower density of life. Almost all life starts with plant life. plant life needs sun light and nutrients So in the deep mid ocean what plants you have near the surface when they die sink to the bottom. When fish eat the waste sinks. When the the fish that dies eats them they sink. So you have have the energy source and the nutrients separated by miles of water column. Unless you have vertical currents there is not much mixing. BTW the richest locations in the sea are where deep water raises to the surface. So yes they are natural because they are caused by the laws of physics. Kind of like how there really isn't much life above 1700 meters in the atmosphere unless there is some kind of land sticking up.

One more thing

[Anonymous Coward]

To add: If the Captain of any vessel orders it, (in an emergency) any containers they are carrying can be jettisoned to ensure the ship's safety.
Having worked helping customers move their personal possessions overseas, (mainly for oil & telecommunications companies) I can tell you we very rarely mention it. I have had many people as me if they can pack their kids in with their sofas though.

Re:One more thing

[argStyopa]

Here's an even more unpleasant truth about international ocean shipping: essentially the shipping company is not liable for the 'disposed' containers, either. If the shipping company has enough losses on a vessel to declare a "General Average", then the compensation for the losses (including vessel damage, if any) are assessed against the other *customers* with cargo on that vessel.

Basically, the vessel is carrying the cargo as a courtesy; any risk of loss belongs to the owners of the cargo(es) collectively, NOT to the carrier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average

So as a forwarding agent, not only do you get the pleasure of telling someone that their container of goods has been lost, you get to tell them that
a) they still have to pay freight shipping costs, AND
b) they're going to be legally liable for their 'share' of whatever the general average costs work out to be

Oh it's great fun.

Re:One more thing

[garyebickford]

And that is why these guys recommend shipping insurance (there are many others in their business, I'm sure). They also maintain the Gallery of Transport Loss, with photos of the disasters that have occurred to various ships and freight airplanes, which for some reason I find terrifically amusing.

It's also an example of terrible web design (on every page you have to scroll down a long way to get to the actual content). Nevertheless it's worth navigating in any case for a couple of hours of pictures of ships on the beach, ships sinking, ships struck by hurricanes, ships losing containers, etc.

A couple of examples:

towboat pulled under a bridge, rolled upside down, and comes up on the other side

M/V APL China struck by hurricane, limps into port with containers hanging over the side.

Last but not least, a day at the beach turns into four months. Truly amazing pictures of people walking up the beach next to a huge container carrier

Sharks with fricken iphones

[Leuf]

You do not want to be the guy that has to explain to the shark that water damage isn't covered.

A-HA!

[93 Escort Wagon]

I knew all that global warming stuff was nonsense. Now we know the REAL reason sea levels are rising - it's simply displacement of 10,000 cargo containers' worth of water every year!

After all, all that water has to go SOMEWHERE...

Re:Incoterms

[Thorfinn.au]

Yes, but no-one deals is in anything but FOB or FIS.

29,000 rubber ducks

[DigiShaman]

Reminds me of this story. Basically, 29,000 toy yellow ducks fell overboard as it was leaving China back in 1992.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-464768/Thousands-rubber-ducks-land-British-shores-15-year-journey.html

Well known hazard to yachties

[waimate]

Many of these tend to float pretty much at surface level for days or even weeks. With surface waves, they are impossible to see from small craft but of course are massive and hard. They are a very well known hazard to cruising folk crossing oceans, and will readily hole and sink a fibreglass yacht, or even knock a keel off. Forward-looking sonar, if you've got it, can't see them because of waves.

There are thousands of people crossing oceans in smallish boats, and every year a few of them go missing due to shipping containers. They very thought of them makes a cruising yachtie's blood run cold.

Re:Well known hazard to yachties

[bill_mcgonigle]

Are the automatic sinking valves out there yet? I thought I read about 10 years ago about a gizmo that would be installed into a container that would have a couple radios in it. One would sense the ship's radio (or that it's been removed from the ship and not disabled). In that case, the second radio would be a transmitter beacon, to help locate the missing cargo container if it's fallen off a ship (and has sufficiently valuable contents). It would also be detectable by other ocean vessels. When the battery was about to run out on the transmitter beacon, the last thing it would do would be to blow a valve, causing the container to sink.

The additional logistics would consist of checking in and out a container when it was put on a ship, electronically registering it to the ship - not terribly hard to implement or integrate. Countries could require these valves for entry at their ports.

Or, did I just dream that one up?

Re:Well known hazard to yachties

[radtea]

Or, did I just dream that one up?

Probably not, but consider the economics: millions of containers, 0.1% loss rate, hundreds of dollars in hardware that has to be maintained (batteries swapped out once every few years at the very least.) Who is goiing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a problem they don't have?

Then consider the politics: the only way you'd make this fly would be with a global treaty requiring it, which would be opposed by a small number of wealthy and well-organized companies and championed by a few disorganized individuals with very little at stake.

Technological solutions of this kind are only useful if they can be practically implemented.

Re:Well known hazard to yachties

[VolciMaster]

Are the automatic sinking valves out there yet? I thought I read about 10 years ago about a gizmo that would be installed into a container that would have a couple radios in it. One would sense the ship's radio (or that it's been removed from the ship and not disabled). In that case, the second radio would be a transmitter beacon, to help locate the missing cargo container if it's fallen off a ship (and has sufficiently valuable contents). It would also be detectable by other ocean vessels. When the battery was about to run out on the transmitter beacon, the last thing it would do would be to blow a valve, causing the container to sink.

The additional logistics would consist of checking in and out a container when it was put on a ship, electronically registering it to the ship - not terribly hard to implement or integrate. Countries could require these valves for entry at their ports.

Or, did I just dream that one up?

If you *din't* dream it up - then it's pretty cool. If you *did* - you should go patent it.

They aren't lost one at a time...

[Anonymous Coward]

They overload container vessels on purpose, raising the center of gravity of the ship. If there is smooth sailing, you make millions extra a year. If you hit rough seas, you cut loose your entire top layer of containers, lower your COG, and still come out ahead in the grand scheme of it all.

1 an hour...as an average. Reality would be more like every 100 hours 100 containers get cut loose.

Re:They aren't lost one at a time...

[TheTurtlesMoves]

I have been told you can get quite cheap rates for the top layers. Also some have shear pins even, so that once the roll is at a particular level, they pop off automatic like (so i am told).

Also you should never, ever, ever ship something without insurance if you can't afford the loss.

It's not just containers that get lost

[ahodgkinson]

I've seen a statistic somewhere, I think it was from Lloyds, which states that, on average, one ship gets lost per day somewhere in the world (I believe it included hijacking and piracy) . These are mostly small ships, but given that an occasional container ship goes missing, I wonder how many of the containers are lost due to entire ships sinking.

I also wonder how much theft and smuggling contributes to the number of 'lost' containers

Stop the whining.

[MaroonMotor]

Container sacrifice is the only thing prolonging Cthulhu's sleep.

wessel

[ghostdoc]

nope, still pronouncing 'vessel' in my head as 'wessel'. Damn them and their multicultural crew.

Top Heavy

[zbrewski]

Original article claims the containers are rarely weighted. I beg to differ, for I was briefly employed in this industry and have witnessed great care during loading (and unloading) container ships. The Center Of Gravity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacentric_height) for any ocean going vessel is very very important thing and has to be kept right in proper place for given ship, not too low and not too high. While one can adjust CoG to some level by ballast tanks/pumps, the weight of containers and their positioning are major factor. I think the guys and gals on the container ships are taking this very seriously.