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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."
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.
"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..."
Transferring isn't really viable. These ships don't have cranes on em. How in the world would you, at sea, pluck a container from the top of the stack and move it to another boat? Helicopter? That's a logistical and economical nightmare for a couple of containers....
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.
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.
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.