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Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- richkirkpa 5y agoUnder rated statement of the day .. “These vessels are designed to carry the boxes, and to have these losses is — dare I say it — unacceptable.”
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- guynamedloren 5y agoNo mention of recovery. I wonder.. are the containers ever recovered, or is it prohibitively expensive, or, logistically near impossible?
- kingvash 5y agoThey have a valve that scuttles them after a few hours otherwise they are a big hazard for other boats
- durakot 5y agoPerhaps some new ones do, but generally most containers have nothing of the sort: "Depending on whether they are full or empty, and on the nature of the cargo inside, containers may float at the surface for several days or weeks prior to sinking. Containers are not generally entirely watertight; while an empty container is likely to sink due to water ingress, a full container will likely float until air trapped in the cargo has escaped.’"
- Syonyk 5y agoMy container (used for land-based storage) has obviously seen travel, and has nothing beyond a couple corner air vents. None of the other containers I'm familiar without here (they're quite popular for storage) have anything of the sort. That valve is a nice idea, but doesn't really exist in most of the fleet of containers on the ocean. They are, indeed, a hazard for other boats, though they generally won't "lurk below the surface." Either they're floating from buoyancy of what's in them, or they sink. The increasing water pressure as you descend makes "floating below the surface" a particularly unstable place.
- ImprovedSilence 5y ago>> has nothing beyond a couple corner air vents. Perhaps the perpetually open two way valves of your container are obsolete?
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI wonder if someone can make a living recovering these containers and selling their contents on eBay (considering it seems everyone treats the fallen off container as litter..).
- elihu 5y agoFrom the article, it seems that container losses don't generally happen one at a time, but rather you have some event where a ship loses hundreds at once. I guess if you're quick maybe you could get a ship in and scoop them up before they sink, but in order to save more than a few you'd need a big ship and most of the time you'd just be sitting around waiting for the next container loss event, and the ship would sit idle for months or years. I'm assuming that if it sinks in deep water it's gone, but even there maybe there's an opportunity to salvage containers off the sea floor with the right equipment. Probably not worthwhile economically, but who knows? Maybe the best case for this could be made for ships that normally at sea doing other things to be ready to divert from their ordinary tasks to collect containers if they don't have anything more pressing. (Coast Guard ships or Navy support vessels perhaps?)
- edoceo 5y agodeep sea robot recovery for materials recovery/recycling? likely not profitable now but, well, time makes fools of us all.
- elihu 5y agoI'd guess that the median economic value of the contents of some random container that's been saturated in sea water is probably pretty low. The container itself is worth a bit if it's still usable as a container, otherwise it's what it's worth as scrap metal. I'm having trouble imagining many things that would still be valuable. Even things in sealed containers might be crushed by the water pressure. Other than gold bars, what would still be useful? Construction-grade lumber, maybe? I could imagine this being a rich person's hobby. And maybe the basis of a Netflix series or something, like shows about the gold miners in Alaska.
- killingtime74 5y agoThis has been going on for decades but nobody cares because there are no consequences
- learningwebdev 5y agoThere are quite obviously consequences, but perhaps not for the people who are in a position to ensure the containers don't fall overboard? Somebody is certainly losing money here.
- katbyte 5y agoInsurance
- learningwebdev 5y agoSo insurance companies are losing money and raising premiums accordingly? Perhaps nobody is losing enough money to really care about the problem. The graph in the linked article suggests that 11 out of the last 13 years, losses have amounted to around $80 million or less. A lot of money, but perhaps not a lot of money to the shipping industry and/or their insurers?
- SirSourdough 5y agoConsidering there are individual ships that carry more than a billion dollars worth of cargo and way more containers in a single trip than are lost in total in a year, I think you are probably correct.
- agumonkey 5y agoYes it's priced and amortized all over the system.
- katbyte 5y agoIt amounts to a rounding error when you look at yearly cost of shilling. Remember the Suez Canal when blocked was costing 400 million a day.
- shoo 5y agoTo anchor discussion, prior to the rise of intermodal shipping containers in the '60s & '70s, cargo was shipped as breakbulk cargo. Losses from theft and damage were considerably reduced by switching from breakbulk cargo to shipping containers. Not the same as losing stuff over the side, but still a regular and somewhat predictable expense. One anecdote I remember from Levinson's book is about a scottish whisky distiller exporting to the US being very excited about being able to ship whisky in a giant stainless steel vessel inside a container instead of shipping individual bottles inside wooden crates (imagine the theft during loading/unloading...). That said, shipping containers were not adopted because they reduced theft and damage (consequently the cost of insuring cargo), they were adopted because they offered much lower costs to shippers (after enough investment in ships and ports and cranes and trucks and changes to transport regulation to provide the infrastructure to move containers around efficiently without double-handling them or unloading and repacking them for technical/labour/regulatory reasons). Marc Levinson's book _The Box_ about the history of the shipping container is worth a read -- https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/the-box https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/th...
- rurounijones 5y ago"The box that changed Britain" is a good BBC documentary on the subject as well if you can find it online.
- samstave 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEH0Db0XVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEH0Db0XVc
- pchristensen 5y agoThe Box is way more fascinating than it has any right to be. It touches on basically every aspect of post-1950 world economy, history, urban planning, social changes, migration, etc.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
- xiphias2 5y agoI see ships being overloaded a good problem to have. The more countries trade with eachother, the less reason they have to fight wars with eachother.
- dmitrygr 5y agoMy sister wrote & defended her PhD thesis disproving this intuitive but wrong connection. Plenty of states happily trade with their enemies during wars. So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war. States are most likely to cut off trade during war in very long wars - which are no longer possible between nuclear powers. http://mariya.gr/research.htm http://mariya.gr/research.htm If you have counter-arguments other than "But, but, but that FEELS wrong", i am sure she'd like to hear them, her email is on the site"
- throwaway4594 5y agoThe summary of her dissertation is really interesting, thanks for sharing! But I think OP's point was "countries who trade with each other are less likely to go to war", not "countries who trade with each other never go to war". And I think OP is right. "So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war." Seatbelts do not stop people dying in car accidents. But seatbelts do reduce the chances of dying in a car accident. I know I'm being pedantic, but it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Even a prophylactic that works 1% of the time is better than nothing.
- xiphias2 5y agoYes, war doesn’t stop trading, but it makes it more expensive. My favourite example is the Kula ring that used 2 monetary instruments circling between islands in different directions as a proof that other islands are not in war with eachother: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
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- superfamicom 5y agoIs there a list of what exactly was lost? Does anyone actively seek out and salvage this sunken treasure? I hate to think of another Garfield Phone thing in the future with something more dangerous. https://time.com/5561165/garfield-phones-france/ https://time.com/5561165/garfield-phones-france/
- throwaway316943 5y agoSomewhere there is a container full of Amazon Basics Butt Plugs waiting to spill forth its rubbery contents upon unsuspecting American beaches.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 5y agoIn Houston, we call that a Tuesday
- Rebelgecko 5y agoIn the 1990s, a ship from Hong Kong bound for Tacoma, Washington lost a shipping container that was filled with 30,000 yellow duckies. Oceanographers were able to collaborate with beachcombers in the western US (and eventually as far away as the UK) to validate their models of how the currents would move the ducks.
- somewhereoutth 5y agoThankyou for the poetry!
- lostlogin 5y agoMy grandfather used to go and salvage (loot?) smashed up ships on the Yorkshire coast after storms as a kid in the early 20th century. They had places they’d go after bad weather, knowing that’s where wrecks ended up.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
- dataflow 5y agoAre there no environmental concerns here? I'm kind of confused why no one seems to mention anything about that.
- wongarsu 5y ago3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean. Most dangerous chemicals that you don't want in the ocean are loaded in a way that they are surrounded by other containers, so they are less likely to fall off (and less likely to be shot by pirates and catch fire). It seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the sinking containers are filled with pretty harmless stuff
- edoceo 5y agoI saw somewhere that for loading the outer/upper containers are lighter ones, and generally consumer grade plastic crap (toys, shoes, etc). same video shows loads of this stuff arriving on the shores of Oregon, USA - just a little waterlogged.
- egocentric 5y ago> drop in the ocean cough
- robbrown451 5y agoMy analysis of that analogy is that "ocean," being on both sides of the equation, simply cancels out, so basically it is saying that a 3000 shipping containers equals one drop. Which I'm not buying. :)
- _Microft 5y agoThere are five oceans worldwide, though. So I would like to correct your calculation like this: 3000 containers/(1 year * 5 oceans) = 1 drop/ocean Therefore 1 drop equals 600 containers/year. Have a nice day and stay silly :)
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- JKCalhoun 5y ago> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021. A fascinating record we leave the next explorers.
- Sebb767 5y agoIf they can find them. We've lost whole planes in the ocean ; finding something as small as a shipping container will require a big stroke of luck.
- felipemnoa 5y ago>>stroke of luck I'm sure that that's how we've found lots of really old stuff and continue to do so. Just imagine all the stuff that we haven't found yet.
- learningwebdev 5y agoI think any future generations will likely have more advanced technologies for finding stuff. And hopefully somebody figures out how to find my glasses.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lmilcin 5y ago> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021. Umm... we have end of April (the article is dated April 29th) or 1/3rd of the year. The last time I checked a third of 3000 is around 1000. Anyway, nowhere in the article I see any numbers to support that there is a "sudden rise in accidents". Even the graphs themselves seem to show entirely different picture -- that this might just be a fluke.
- jlund-molfese 5y agoBut the graph only shows YTD losses, right? If you make the 2021 graph 3 times larger to compensate for the roughly 1/3rd of the year we've seen so far[1], it looks like more than a fluke than just 2020 alone. Both 2020 and 2021 should have more cargo loss than any year since 2013. [1] https://i.imgur.com/k5hWs8u.jpg https://i.imgur.com/k5hWs8u.jpg
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThere's no reason to suspect that we'll see two more 250+ crate loss accidents this year leading to results like your graph predicts.
- nieve 5y agoNor is there any reason to supposed that the increased accidents are pure flukes that can't possibly happen again this year. If there's increased _systemic_ risk due to risky sailing, bad cargo management, etc. it'd be understandable for more outliers to occur. I don't think we can handwave away that somehow we're done with major accidents for the year only a third of the way in.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago>I don't think we can handwave away that somehow we're done with major accidents for the year only a third of the way in. These kinds of events are rare, even if something is causing more systemic risk there's no way to predict how many more will happen this year. I'm not handwaving anything away, I'm saying projections aren't useful.
- gumby 5y agoThis has always worried me when I’ve moved across the ocean (three times). Books, photos, personal items heading over the side of a ship. I know the odds are low but it’s different from a container ipod identical, brand new Phones.
- learningwebdev 5y agoWhen you move overseas, wouldn't you take anything with sentimental value onboard with you as luggage? I can't imagine being too devastated to lose books or whatever other larger items people take when they relocate overseas (assuming that you would be compensated for the monetary value of lost items and be able to replace them). In my experience, most sentimental items are small enough to easily fit in a suitcase. However, on second thought, I suppose some people would have more and larger sentimental items than I do, like large vases or antique pieces of furniture and so forth. Is it possible to pay extra to have a very large flotation device attached to your shipping container? :P
- cheschire 5y agoAirplane luggage is lost quite often as well. And carry on luggage is very limited.
- dzhiurgis 5y agoSounds like a good use for AirTags (or EPIRB or AIS or tons of other cheap-as-microchips solutions that could save few sailors' lives). But given we can't even put those on half a billion dollar airplanes - I'm not holding my breath.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThis is amazing, who would’ve thought that clicking on a ‘delivery now’ button might topple a container for people in 1000 years to find.
- CalChris 5y ago... to captains not deviating from a storm to save on fuel and time as they face pressure from charterers ... Rather than shifting this cost to the shippers, they are essentially shifting it to the insurers and then paying more in premiums as a result. Slow Steaming is going to cause some of this because ships will be en route longer and therefore more at risk of weather delay. Maybe they should apply the principle of General Average and simply charge for weather delays, shift this cost to the shippers.
- cabernal 5y agoIt'll be interesting when these container are found thousands of years into the future, assuming humans (or transhumans) still being around.
- cbozeman 5y agoI would love for a shipment of dildos to be found, along with a shipment of books with at least one titled Teledildonics Programming in Python for the Professional Programmer, 3rd Edition: Updated with a new chapter on TCP/IP latency reduction.
- throwaway_kufu 5y agoI see it now, future oceanic archeologists uncover the container and publish an article about a long lost undersea civilization that used container as part of an religious site where they made offerings to their gods as part of a ritual. It will remain a mystery as to why the civilization left the site and disappeared but the team will be soliciting more funding to continue its research.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoAnd then, as they find more of them, they speculate about how wide the reach of this lost civilization was...
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoIntermodal shipping containers are arguable the most significant technology of the 20th century. They did more to improve worldwide standard of living, than any other advancement. Including medical.
- timcosta 5y agoPenicillin says hello
- thehappypm 5y agoA surprisingly huge leap forward for the world was air conditioning. Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, said it was essential for his country's development. Without AC a huge swath of the world would still be seen by the West as this uninhabitable, uncivilized jungle.
- Scoundreller 5y agoAnd made sure it was installed in every government building. Otherwise productivity would suffer.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoAt 200 million shipping container trips per year, whether losses are 1000, 4000 or 10,000 seems pretty insignificant. Even 200,000 would be around 1-in-1000 or a tenth of a percent chance of your laptop being lost overboard.
- danielovichdk 5y agoThere are very big differences in captain papers around the world. It's a very know fact that e.g Mærsk has changed their top tier crew from being Danish to chineese, indian, phillipine etc. I am only implying that education might be part of it.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoForged certificates is indeed a problem in the latter countries, but whether Danish, Chinese, Indian or Filipino, they're all told by a computer where to put each container. Some blame may lie with those who tell the computer how tall it should stack the containers, but another big problem in shipping is that stevedores in many ports simply can't be bothered to secure the cargo according to the instructions. Deck officers (even western ones) don't take the problem seriously, leave port in an unseaworthy state, and leave the able-bodied seamen with the dangerous task of re-lashing everything under way. That is if they can even reach the cargo, which is less likely on a container ship.
- bkor 5y ago> Some blame may lie with those who tell the computer how tall it should stack the containers Computers do NOT make the stowage layout. The stowage layout is the responsibility of stowage planners. The captain of the ship has final say. There are various computer programs that assist with the stowage layout. However, they are _not_ sufficient. If you'd take out the stowage planner the shipping company would have a lot of additional costs. These programs do help to check for loads of problems, plus the initial inefficient stowage plan. How tall something is stacked is too simplistic. What matters is that it isn't stacked as a box. Further, certain twist locks cannot handle too much wind. Source: used to sit next to a stowage planner, who'd be in the office around 1x/month. The planner mostly talked during these visits.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y agoI agree with everything you say. >Computers do NOT make the stowage layout. The stowage layout is the responsibility of stowage planners. Yes, that's what I meant by "those who tell the computer..." >how tall something is stacked is too simplistic. And that's why I went on to expand on the dynamics of timetables, third party contractors and the correct execution of lashing instructions. It's true that the captain has the final say, but realistically for large ships and the combinatorial explosion that comes with them the captain and his deck officers simply doesn't have time to check and correct the work of either the stowage planners or the stevedores. Even if they are all western Europeans and Americans with genuine documents.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoSome background on problems of containers to other ships and yachts: https://www.yachtingworld.com/news/could-a-floating-shipping-container-sink-your-yacht-is-the-danger-to-sailors-real-or-imagined-107508 https://www.yachtingworld.com/news/could-a-floating-shipping...
- Borrible 5y agoTo get numbers to publish, just ask the right people and make an educated guess? https://www.ship-technology.com/features/featurecargo-overboard-4517226 https://www.ship-technology.com/features/featurecargo-overbo...
- buster 5y agoI am wondering, why it's talking about the absolute number of 3000 containers, but not mentioning if or how the shipping logistics evolved in that time. It could as well be, that shipping simply increased over years, could it not? edit: According to https://stats.unctad.org/handbook/MaritimeTransport/Indicators.html https://stats.unctad.org/handbook/MaritimeTransport/Indicato... container shipments increased steadily over years.
- Retric 5y agoThe data is far to noisy for such small changes to be particularly relevant. The 2013 peak looks about 15x as high as 2017.
- Ichthypresbyter 5y agoFor interest, here are the UK Maritime Accident Investigation Branch reports into two incidents of loss of containers overboard in the Pacific from ships that happened to be UK-flagged at the time: https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-overboard-from-container-ship-ever-smart https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove... The Ever Smart (yes, owned by Evergreen's UK subsidiary)- 44 containers lost. https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-overboard-from-container-ship-cma-cgm-g-washington https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove... The CMA CGM G. Washington- 137 containers lost.