Studying the Impact of Lost Shipping Containers

swellconvivialguy writes "Looking at a picture of the world's largest container ship, it's easy to visualize how 10,000 containers fall overboard from these vessels every year. Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are now undertaking the Lost Container Cruise, an attempt to gauge the effects of shipping containers lost at sea by studying a tire-filled container, which marine biologists discovered in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. (The research [PDF] is being funded by a multi-million dollar settlement with the operators of the Med Taipei, the ship that lost the cargo.) The work is not unlike studying a deep water shipwreck: Use robotic submarine to take pictures and collect sediment samples; repeat."

Comments

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[jklovanc]

Except for steel railings, the shippers do everything you have mentioned. The reason for no railing is that the containers themselves are the structure and they are stacked far above the hull of the ship.

Here is the tie down that goes between the containers http://www.tandemloc.com/0_securing/S_AD54000A.asp

Here is a picture of the lashing used http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueship/137784714/

Re:Can't they tie them down?

[GreenTom]

Here's a pic of a container ship after going through rough seas: http://i.imgur.com/4ynah.jpg. I'm stunned that those containers are still on board. Looks like they're chained down, but even metal breaks eventually