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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."
Times two.
;-)
Both were probably Lost at sea in transit from the Beijing sellers to my home.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Wow, 10,000? Why don't they use chains or something to hold those bad boys down in choppy waters? Or, I don't know, built steel railings along the perimeters? Or inter-locking Lego-like attachments between containers?
I guess the good news is that they will mostly sink down into the muddy bottom and be out of the way. You wouldn't want those things floating on the surface like icebergs or something.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I have no that that a large number of cargo containers really do fall off during bad weather or whatever, but I wonder what percentage of that 10,000 are lost at sea vs. "lost at sea" while the dock workers look the other way.
While some of the contents of my shipping container mysteriously vanished on the way across the Atlantic, I can't help but feel that someone is going to notice if a dock worker tries to drive out of the docks with a forty-foot container sticking out of the trunk of their car.
Ummm, they do interlock using locking pins - so in normal rough-and-tumble they stay together... that doesn't do diddly when the ship lists 45 degrees and then you get side to side rolling of the deck - those locking pins sheer off, and away they go. Ropes and railing won't really help that much, either. Plus, if you DID keep them all together, and fastened to the deck - you'd risk capsizing the cargo container ship, and sending the whole mess to the bottom of the ocean. Better to lose a container or two - and claim it on insurance.
Due to "piracy"? That's how the *IAA and SBA account for those huge piracy numbers!
"We believe that late 20th century humans had a variety of cults, worshipping (among other totems) rubber models of ducks and some strange-looking footwear..."
Considering the huge opportunity for graft I wonder how many containers are simply off loaded at sea to other vessels and reported lost? Insurance covers the loss for the owners of the containers and the crew makes a killing.
Indeed. And even if the shipping companies didn't care, there's the whole customs thing -- most oceanic freight is international, not intra-national. Even though customs is a joke, it would be sort of difficult to claim that a container was lost at sea after it cleared customs.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This reminds me of a photograph a friend of mine showed me years ago from a dive trip to the Red Sea. While there on a dive at a random site (live aboard dive boat), they ran across a contrainer on the bottom in about 80 feet of water that had broken open, of all the possible treasures it might have contained it was full of toilets. The photo showed a diver sitting on an upright one in the pile of toilets.
Next they can do an environmental impact of the study that studied the lost container.
How much fossil fuel was used by the sub going down there to get samples.
How much damage did the sub do by disturbing the site.
How many trees were used to print the journal the research was published in.
I'm stretching the definition of grey as much as possible here. Anyone with the right resources could probably travel through these shipping routes and reclaim these lost shipping containers. If none of the contents get damaged, then they could probably be sold on the grey market since the manufacturers have probably already scratched these off their records already as losses. Only flaw here is that the cost of doing business would outweigh the profits generated from selling the goods, if they even happen to be undamaged. Also, any competition here would make this business unfeasible and possibly very bloody.
Wasn't there a similar post about cargo lost? I bookmarked this page on "Gallery of Transport Loss -- Photos & Lessons of Disaster" at http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html and oh man are there zillions of photos of all kinds of transport accidents. Some cargo damaged at ports but the amount lost at sea is staggering! Though be careful as this site is interesting and can become a huge timepit surfing through all the pics.
All kinds of disasters including "Meals Ready to Explode" (ya know all them MREs with water activated heaters, what about containers filled with MREs with their heaters and water gets inside), http://www.cargolaw.com/2001nightmare_mre2.html
Here's an interesting mention from the cargolaw webpage:
"We are frequently asked the question: Do Containers Float? Why yes, they do -- at least for a while depending upon the container age, whether there are holes and the volume of air within the stow. There are many documented cases of partially submerged containers -- floating just at the surface which have been hazards to navigation. In Year 2000 the entire crew of the F/V Solway Harvester fishing trawler perished when their vessel struck a partially submerged container in the North Sea -- laden with mayonnaise. You probably have never considered mayonnaise to be dangerous. "
mfwright@batnet.com
The article should really look a bit into why container ships are loaded the way they are. The article contends, with no fact to support this contention, that one of the issue is that heavy containers that are loaded high on the sip are a major cause of the issue. Their solution is to load heavy containers first. Lets look into what would be required to do this feat.
1a. Every time a container come it it would be sorted by size so that the large one would be easily accessed first.
Issues:
containers come in one at a time over quite a long period of time. what happens if many light ones come after all the heavy ones? The heavy ones get burried.
1b. Alternately, sort the containers before they are loaded.
This would require more space and handling each container at least one additional time.
Lets assume that all the heavy containers are in the bottom of the ship. The article neglects the fact that container ships usually make more than one offloading stop. They are currently loaded so that the containers can be unloaded at each stop while still maintaining the balance of the ship. If the heavy containers are at the bottom, it would require unloading containers above the heavy containers, unloading the heavy containers and re-loading the light containers. This takes time and space.
Every minute a container ship is tied up at a dock costs money. The sorting and excess loading/unloading take time. Most ports are also very crowded and do not have the space required to do the sorting of containers to make sure heavy containers are loaded lower. There is also a limited number of berths for container ships. The longer a ship is in port means fewer ships can be loaded and unloaded by that port.
One final point, everything breaks. Even light containers go overboard. A perfect example is the container full of tires. Compared to shipments such as metals, tires are relatively light but a container full of them still went overboard. Given rough enough water even an empty container can break loose.
Here are some of the parameters that container loading software uses to place containers on a ship.
the weight of each container being handled
which port each container will be unloaded at
if the container is refrigerated, and needs to be plugged in during the voyage
if the container’s contents are hazardous, as these could be potentially explosive if placed next to a refrigerated container
advising Customs of the ship’s arrival and reporting the cargo on board
the order in which the containers will be loaded and unloaded.
A lot of science goes into the efficient loading and unloading of containers; sorting by weight is taken into account but not the overriding consideration.
Just because it came off of the ship doesn't mean the Customs ever got notified that it's in the yard. It's even possible that, *gasp!* people with rather high dollar interests managed to find a way to bribe officials to let a truck or two out without documentation, or to forge documentation that made it look legitimate.
Consider these container ship pictures and the number of containers present, then consider that there are a lot more than one ship's container load in a dockyard, and that containers can be loaded on to rail, tractor trailer, or on to other ships, and in some places can probably be manually emptied. There's probably a whole railyard in the area, and a large fleet of tractor trailers. It's probable that they genuinely lose stuff in the yard without meaning to, and that some stuff that hasn't cleared customs genuinely gets accidentally loaded for outbound shipping. Further consider how much of what we buy comes in from overseas (almost all TVs and other consumer electronics, most small appliances, some large appliances, lots of cheap tools and equipment, most of our furniture, most of our clothing, lots of food, etc) it's no wonder there's real worry that our shipping is the next target for attack.
If you want to fix all of this, the simple solution is to upgrade the security at the ports to the point that the speed of the non-security setup we currently have is maintained, and factor that cost into the cost to ship. That could mean 100x the number of personnel, billions of dollars in equipment, and probably new legislation to get it to happen, but it'll have a few benefits- first, one reduces the "lost" container problem, as it's much harder to bribe the necessary number of officials when there are many more officials paying attention. Second, it reduces the real possibility of an attack, as suddenly containers get the scrutiny that they should. Third, if the real cost to pay for all of this gets built into the price of the good, suddenly foreign goods are much more expensive than they were relative to domestic goods, which benefits our domestic economy and is difficult to label as an unfair tariff as it's just forcing importers to pay for the real security costs to import.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
it's rather simple, the way a container get's lost is ...
a) declared not lifted by the crane operator and marks his list showing that he lifted only 1 less than what he really lifted.
b) that container is placed on a truck, and stacked near the empties.
c) wait for the late gate to be opened one day, and have a yard hauler move it over to someone warehouse. ( the late gate is not
that effective in counting containers leaving the port, that gate is good for last minute cargo that has to make it to the vessel or export.)
d) unload container
e) give the container to a buddy at the scrap yard he grinds it and it's gone.
I once lost a container at the port. I was warned that once I was at the port, I might not make it back ( containers do fall, even on windless days ),
so I went to the port with a few people, paid a union man to drive me around and stick to my side like butter on bread ( ever see a union port worker nervous )
and by pot luck found my container. What they did not know at that time is that I was renting P&O and Cast Line containers for redeliver back to china, so these containers were blue, rather easy to see, and I quickly found it. the export cargo was worth in excess of 400K and I did not want this customer to go to another shipper.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
That was an issue about a decade ago, then we stopped hearing about it. The shippers would provide minimal living conditions and sometimes lose contact at the other end. Most of these immigrants were southern Chinese who'd become effectively indentured servants for several years in the US while paying off their fees. I wonder if it has stopped. Maybe slightly higher 9-11 security would have detected a greater fraction of these. I'd guess just coming through the northern or southern US borders is a lot less trouble.
What grinds my gears is not the fact that the commenters have come up with a marketable, fiscally sufficient means of alleviating the problem in regards to both merchant losses and pollution within a few minutes of this article going live... No, that's what I come here for, anyway.
My problem is that the folks in the executive offices of the shipping companies are in an office suite that probably has a big something-"insurance" sign on the front of it, and they don't give a rat's ass about your silly pollution or physical losses so long as they can push the costs of such inconveniences away from them and to the folks leasing their containers and buying their insurance.
Isn't this just a reprint of this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12718251 from 3 months ago?
You've been watching too many movies.
Is it possible? Of course, anything's possible. But it's much less work to just empty the container later than to claim it was lost at sea. Your cockamamie scheme just makes things more difficult than they need to be for no reason AND raises the odds of getting caught. What if that customs agent is just pretending to go along? What if a supervisor happens to do an inspection? What if the container has a GPS tracker inside, which any container of significant value would?
Now I'm not saying that what you describe had *never* happened, but I'd wager heavily it's not an epidemic.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Very good point but I imagine if say you had a crew on the take, a few containers could get offloaded to a smaller pirate vessal while at sea. Such a vessal by virtue of being smaller might not have to dock at busy port with a customs authroirty. They could emty out the container fence the goods and dumpt the empty containers back at sea. Then send the conainter ship crew their cut via WU, or other wire service, and finally do it all again next week.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Isn't "fell off the back of a truck" code for stolen? I'm sure it's the same for shipping.
Just what would be the International law regarding...oh, I don't know...salvage of these things :)
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
I just pulled up the information for the Port of Los Angeles (San Pedro). They averaged 140 million metric revenue tons through the port. Being pessimistic and assuming that the weight of the container itself factors into a metric revenue ton, and assuming for this thought exercise that every shipping container is loaded to maximum weight, I still come up with over 4,615,000 containers through the Port of LA alone in a year. At one port, not accounting for light containers.
Are you trying to tell me that Customs is opening and inspecting 4,615,000 containers in LA? Are you somehow implying that they can keep track of everything, or that they're somehow able to even keep their heads above water?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
How exactly do you propose they move one of these containers while at sea? The force?
I know a man who buys 'lost' containers from the port of Oakland.
I didn't believe him as it seemed preposterous that they could not track down the owner or a shipping container/contents. The owners name is right on the box along with a serial#.
I believe him now. I've seen his yard (you need a destination for the containers). Port computer system must be a cluster hog (going to say pig but it's the bay area) fuck from hell.
Average winning bid for a lost shipping container $50,000. Blind. All you know is gross weight and that somebody was paying at least $2000 to ship the stuff. Worst case for him was a breakeven. Best case was a container full of industrial shrink wrap rolls. Middle was marble tiles.
I can't get the location and dates out of the dude. Port of Oakland web sight was a mess last I looked. I think the sale is actually from an operator. It's an old boys network as far as I can tell. Liable to get your tires cut just showing up uninvited.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The US sells many of them locally. ISO containers make great small shop buildings.
I have two 40' High Cubes, the extra ceiling height is nice) and a conventional 20'. Easy to move, easy to set, easy to work with.
Gasketed weatherproof storage is great, they are easy to fit with power and light, and white roof coating drops inside temps nicely.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
How small of a pirate vessel and wouldn't the fact that it had a 30 ton crane on it be a little obvious?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
A friend of mine once told us a story about how the (Australian) air force uses lost floating shipping containers for target practice. That is, when they encounter these floating shipping containers, they fire on them to blow them up / clear the floating hazard.
Is there any truth to this or is it just an old wives tale?
There is probably a large container full of Colecos sitting, waiting to be discovered and put up on eBay.
I'll get to that as soon as I finish digging up this treasure trove of Atari 2600 PacMan cartridges.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Have you been on the sea at sea state 5?!? It will fucking launch the damn things even if everything is perfectly done by the boat crew with perfect chains, tie downs, clamps, etc the container may have a defect or if it's perfect having multiple Gs on a container weight 50k makes things give up.
There's a whole world of marine disasters
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/m_acc.htm
Ima make you dig for 'em, there's more by any country with commercial shipping.
They seem to play bash'em ship a lot.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Can I ask how much you paid for containers and shipping? It's remarkably difficult to find real-world examples of what people have paid for this service.
My pickup ought to be able to move empty ones, even legally, with a sufficiently light trailer...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So it is not global warming (or climate change) causing the sea level to rise! It is the continuous deposit of shipping containers displacing the water!
(And it isn't helped by the North American continent sinking because of the storage of National Geographics in subscriber's basements.)
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I just finished a reading a story that involved container ships, where the author made a point that they *deliberately* put the empties on top, knowing that some will get knocked off.
Further, of course they're fastened. However, when a wave comes *over* the ship, or the wind hits gale force, on a nice, compleely non-aerodynamic surface, that's a *hell* of a lot of force. One goes, and it takes more with it.
And then there are the greedy idiot shipping lines who pile them up to insane hights (or haven't y'all seen the picks of the ships that fell over sideways?)
mark
Well that's probably a result of the US not manufacturing as much as China. If we could fill them up we'd send them back, but sending them back empty is just a waste of fuel.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Of course, I just realized that the ship has to go back anyway, calling myself stupid, so no-one else has to...
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I'm about to send a 28 cu m. container to the US with all my earthly possessions, this story does not make me happy. Who allowed this spiteful and destructive article in here anyway?
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
(Score:-1, Funny)
You are -1 Funny, that made me laugh for some reason.