Shipping Container Losses At Sea

[Deepwater6]

http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea-each-year-heres-a-look-at-one-2/

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21432226

 

As the size of these vessels grow it will be harder and harder to track every container. The 1st article quotes a number of 10,000 lost containers a year. I have read several articles putting the number closer to 20,000.

 

With the sheer size and logistics involved it would be very hard to pin down. Add to that, many shippers not wanting to report the losses. But even at 10,000 a year it's a tremendous amount of material.

 

It also raises serious concerns about the contents of the containers. Yes some may be tires, but some also have harsh chemicals I'm sure. As the article states, what happens when we start moving bulk genetics and nanotechnology?

 

Parts of our ocean floor must look like a scrapyard. As big as they make the ships they are still at risk from losing some of their cargo to severe storms and rogue waves. :o

[CraigD]

http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea-each-year-heres-a-look-at-one-2/

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21432226

 

As the size of these vessels grow it will be harder and harder to track every container. The 1st article quotes a number of 10,000 lost containers a year. I have read several articles putting the number closer to 20,000.

:Exclamati I think some fact-checking is needed of the citation-less 2011 Monteray Bay Aquarium news release from which the 2011 Singularity Hub article appears to have gotten the 10,000 containers/year lost figure. It’s much greater than 350/year no-catastrophic (ie: excluding shipwrecks), 675/year average including catastrophic losses figure from this 2012 news article attributes to the World Shipping Council.

 

Given that there are about 17,000,000 20' container equivalent units (TEU) in service, a loss rate of 10,000, or about 0.06% /year isn’t striking (compared, to, say, a ballpark estimate of the annual loss rate for passenger cars at about 10%/year). I’d hazard a guess that the 10,000 TEU/year loss rate is from an estimate that includes abandoning, repurposing, or scrapping them on land (containers are pretty good for inexpensive buildings or scrap steel).

 

Parts of our ocean floor must look like a scrapyard. As big as they make the ships they are still at risk from losing some of their cargo to severe storms and rogue waves.

Let’s do some arithmetic checks, here.

 

Assuming 10,000 TEU dumped in the ocean per year, the oceans being very big (about 3.6 x 10¹⁴ m²), and containers fairly small (about 6.1 x 2.44 = 14.88 m², or 0.000000000004% the oceans’ area), it’d take on the order of a billion years for the ocean floor to become conspicuously cluttered with them.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21432226

Wow! Those new, soon-to-enter-service 18,000 TEU Triple E class ship is, in a industrial-looking way, spectacular! Articles like these make me regret not following one of my many childhood dreams into the merchant marine profession.

 

As the size of these vessels grow it will be harder and harder to track every container.

Given that a shipping container costs somewhere from US$2,000 to $5,000, and typically holds goods with insurance value from a few $1,000 to a few $1,000,000, I don’t think it’s likely shippers will fail to keep track of them, whether at sea of on land. This is not to say shippers won’t write them off.

 

I’ve personally seen containers simply abandoned (10+ years) along little-trafficked roads, suggesting that the cost of retrieving them is sometimes greater than their write-off cost, I doubt they’re often abandoned at sea, because they're risky to let loose and offload at sea. The newer, larger container ships don’t have their own loading cranes, so essentially can’t dump containers other than in a scary, controlled-catastrophic way.

Edited May 7, 2013 by CraigD
Fixed typos

[Moontanman]

My wife used to work for a shipping company, she says her office in our town lost at least 200 containers a year into the ocean due to bad weather, they shipped less than 4 ships a month, 200 to 300 containers per ship, all military supplies...

[CraigD]

Well, here’s a conundrum!

 

I’ve put most of my confidence in this Oct 2012 Manila Bulletin article, which asserts, without citing verifiable sources (if we need a reminder of the value of hypo’s “back up your claims with links or references” rule, unsources articles like these should do it), but attributing it to a genuine trade organization of which about 90% of shippers are members:

... when one counts the catastrophic losses, an average total loss per year of approximately

675

containers were noted.

 

WSC said total industry losses vary from year to year, but these numbers are well below the 2,000 to 10,000 per year that regularly appear publicly, and represent a very small fraction of container loads shipped each year.

Then we have this Apr 2011 article, which says

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 ...

citing this MBARI news release, which asserts, without citations:

Each year, an estimated 10,000 shipping containers fall off container ships at sea.

Then we have this personal recollection

My wife used to work for a shipping company, she says her office in our town lost at least 200 containers a year into the ocean due to bad weather, they shipped less than 4 ships a month, 200 to 300 containers per ship, all military supplies...

I estimate about 2300 container ships of various sizes currently in operation (data source: http://www.alphaliner.com/top100/index.php), so scaling 4 ships by that, Moontanman’s wife’s info puts make for an estimate on the order of 100,000 containers lost/year.

 

We’re not talking about counting subatomic particles here, but about 20 to 40 foot long truck trailers, each uniquely numbered, most full of valuable, insured merchandise, breaking loose from gigantic ships and splashing into the sea. There is a true, precise, month-by-month number for this – we just don’t have a known reliable source for such data. Unlike people’s, the origin and fate of intermodal containers isn’t a matter of government maintained public record, but of private business, so there’s no equivalent of the US NIF or UN WHO, so there aren’t well-publicized, authoritative sources of data on it.

 

The Manila Bulletin article appears to be reporting the WSC directly refuting, that 10,000/year estimate and offering their own of 675/year, which I’m inclined to take as the best estimate, as I’m guessing the unnamed spokesperson(s) behind the “WSC said” data in it got data for the estimate from shipping company records, which come directly from ship captain and cargomasters logs.

 

I’ve no doubt everyone involved in these estimates is estimating in good faith, but these estimates vary-by-more-than-1000% kind of data drives me crazy! :(

 

Although the MBARI news release doesn’t provide sources, it’s authors graciously provide contacts for additional information. I'll assuage my crazed, preciseive mind by making use of them, which I hope can lead me to the source of the 10,000/year estimate, and give certainty to my suspicion that it’s incorrect, and that the actual number is close to the WSC’s 675.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22397076

 

Moontanman, perhaps your wife would know a little about this from her shipping profession. Not that all shipping companies would follow the rules, but isn't there a protocol to prevent this cross contamination?

 

It would seem falling containers isn't the only damage the shipping industry is creating.

 

I used to go deep-sea fishing off the New Jersey coast often when I was younger. Several things have changed to cause me to stop going.

1. The stocks dwindled dramatically.

2. Minimum length and bag counts were set to extreme points.

3. Talk of making fishermen having to buy a license every year.

4. Small craft couldn't release their septic tanks within a certain distance to the coast, 250 miles I think. (which makes for a long day for those of us who enjoyed drinking a few beers while on the water.)

 

Now I don't know the exact reason, but as a teen fishing with my father, the Bluefish, Weakfish, and Flounder were huge. By the time I got into my 30's it was barren. Even when something was caught it would either be way too small or something you wouldn't want, such as a Sea-Robin.

 

The captains had all kinds of theories, netters dragging and taking everything, Toxic chemicals being released out through the Delaware Bay from Philadelphia, fishing stocks go in cycles, and toxic chemicals/or foreign species being introduced to the area via foreign ships and killing off everything. Who knows, still a bad day on the water still beats a great day at work. :D

[Moontanman]

I've seen the same decline in my area as well, some put the blame on offshore shrimpers, they do kill a huge amount of baby to midsize and even large fish and scour the bottoms clean of anything life can cling to. ship ballast water is a problem, but I'm not sure it affects fisheries in the manner suggested. I have friends in fish and game that deal with this everyday and I have discussed it with them. In our area so far it hasn't been a huge problem but the great lakes have been messed up by some introduced species for sure...

[Deepwater6]

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2011/11/15/great-lakes-invasion

 

As luck would have it, I caught the tail end of a show on the Great Lakes last night. It showed what the bottom of the lakes would look like if they were drained. They did cover this section on the Quagga Mussel. The multitude of shipwrecks creates an ideal environment for them to thrive.

[blamski]

 

Let’s do some arithmetic checks, here.

 

Assuming 10,000 TEU dumped in the ocean per year, the oceans being very big (about 3.6 x 10¹⁴ m¹⁴), and containers fairly small (about 6.1 x 2.44 = 14.88 m¹⁴, or 0.000000000004% the oceans’ arear), it’d take on the order of a billion years for the ocean floor to become conspicuously cluttered with them.

 

 

it might be nitpicking to point this out, but the containers that go overboard aren't spread evenly over the entirety of the world's oceans. all these bulk carriers stick to fairly well defined shipping lanes, and so the majority of containers will end up somewhere at the bottom of them. there's no way i'm going to invest the time to work out the total area of sea floor covered, but its obviously a significantly reduced percentage. i guess it might only take a few tens of thousands of years for container clutterage then...

[LaurieAG]

Don't forget about the ones that, ahem, 'fell off the back of a ship' just like the things that 'fell off the back of a truck' and end up for sale at the local pub.

[Moontanman]

Don't forget about the ones that, ahem, 'fell off the back of a ship' just like the things that 'fell off the back of a truck' and end up for sale at the local pub.

 

Since the company my wife worked for only shipped military supplies that was the object of some speculation from time to time...

[blamski]

then there's the ones get lost when something like this happens :blink:

[Turtle]

it might be nitpicking to point this out, but the containers that go overboard aren't spread evenly over the entirety of the world's oceans. all these bulk carriers stick to fairly well defined shipping lanes, and so the majority of containers will end up somewhere at the bottom of them. there's no way i'm going to invest the time to work out the total area of sea floor covered, but its obviously a significantly reduced percentage. i guess it might only take a few tens of thousands of years for container clutterage then...

 

were it not for nitpicking, we'd all be awash in nits. nobody wants that. :fly:

 

so, I think your sink in sea lanes would depend to a great degree on how long a container remains buoyant. if it floats at or near the surface for long enough it is possible for it to be moved into one of the great ocean gyres and so when a container did finally sink it might be far from any shipping lane.

source: wikipedia

 

 

in the last year we have had japanese tsunami debris including 2 concrete & steel docks wash up on our Washington shores and numerous boats. stuff also washing onto Oregon beaches and i heard recently it's now coming ashore in Cally. so clearly heavy floaty stuff can cross a gyre without capture, making for an even wider possible spread before Davy takes possession.

so, how long will a container float? are some hermetically sealed? how many cubic feet of air does it take to float one? :shrug: .....well....i'm waiting. :lol:

Edited May 9, 2013 by Turtle

[Turtle]

:Exclamati I think some fact-checking is needed of the citation-less 2011 Monteray Bay Aquarium news release from which the 2011 Singularity Hub article appears to have gotten the 10,000 containers/year lost figure. It’s much greater than 350/year no-catastrophic (ie: excluding shipwrecks), 675/year average including catastrophic losses figure from this 2012 news article attributes to the World Shipping Council.

 

Given that there are about 17,000,000 20' container equivalent units (TEU) in service, a loss rate of 10,000, or about 0.06% /year isn’t striking (compared, to, say, a ballpark estimate of the annual loss rate for passenger cars at about 10%/year). I’d hazard a guess that the 10,000 TEU/year loss rate is from an estimate that includes abandoning, repurposing, or scrapping them on land (containers are pretty good for inexpensive buildings or scrap steel).

...

 

 

i found yet another estimate from a marine insurance page of 0.005% overboard losses. (<2000) the page also goes in depth to the sink or float question. bottom line, containers should float, but usually sink rather quickly. i can't fathom it. :doh:

>> Do shipping containers sink? @ Vero Marine Insurance

[Deepwater6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24369244

 

An article about the IPSO's report on the state of our oceans. While I agree with protected fishing zones I get the sense that there is little enforcement of them. Watching such shows as Alaska State Troopers and such on TV, they seem very under funded and under-manned for the huge areas they protect. It's great if states and countries develope pro enviromental policies, but if they don't supply the needed resources for enforcement it will only have partial success. According to this report we continue to lose ground.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/21/world/container-ship-loses-containers/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

WOW, years ago I heard stories of smaller fishing vessels getting painted with a water line. For example the top half would be painted red and somewhere on the side a blue half would start and be painted down to the bottom. This would give the allowable weight on the ship. If too much weight was loaded on the vessel it would be submerged into the red area and the ship would not be safe to travel.

 

I also recall reading stories where the painters were either given the wrong line level or they didn't pay attention and just made their own lines up. With the thinking it didn't hold much more value than making the ship look nice. The mistakes If I'm remembering correctly resulted in some sunken ships.

 

If these containers are not getting weighed it leaves a lot of room for trouble.

[LaurieAG]

It looks like the container weight issue impacts more on the (in)flexibility of ships than their load lines Deepwater6. If you have more weight at both ends you increase the chance of breaking your ship in the middle. Maybe port productivity figures should cover a little bit more than just the number of containers loaded.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_load_line#Load_line