Author Topic: 10,000 shipping containers lost a year?!? (Read 356 times)

Mickey1992 · « **on:** July 11, 2003, 01:57:01 PM »

Neat story. Anyone in the shipping business? Are 10,000 really lost a year?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=33&u=/ap/20030711/ap_on_re_us/ducks_adrift

Far-Flung Bathtub Toys Due in New England
Fri Jul 11,12:04 AM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!

By GREG SUKIENNIK, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON - Being thrown from a container ship, drifting for more than a decade, bobbing through three oceans — it's enough to turn a rubber duckie white.

A floating flock of the bathtub toys — along with beavers, turtles and frogs — is believed to be washing ashore somewhere along the New England coast, bleached and battered from a trans-Arctic journey. Oceanographers say the trip has taught them valuable lessons about the ocean's currents.

The toys have been adrift since 29,000 of them fell from a storm-tossed container ship en route from China to Seattle more than 11 years ago.

From a point in the Pacific Ocean near where the 45th parallel meets the international date line, they floated along the Alaska coast, reaching the Bering Strait by 1995 and Iceland five years later. By 2001 they had floated to the area in the north Atlantic where the Titanic sank.

"Some kept going, some turned and headed to Europe," says Curtis Ebbesmeyer of Seattle, a retired oceanographer who's been tracking the toys' progress. "By now, hundreds should be dispersed along the New England coast."

Ebbesmeyer has been able to track the toys with the help of duckies that washed ashore along the way. He said they have been a useful tool in teaching oceanography, and have shed light on the way surface currents behave.

They are also a sobering reminder that about 10,000 containers fall off cargo ships each year, creating all manner of flotsam and jetsam.

"When trash goes into the ocean, it doesn't disappear," Ebbesmeyer said. "It just goes somewhere else."

Fred Felleman, of the environmental group Ocean Advocates, said container ships carry 95 percent of the world's goods and are stacked higher and wider than ever before, raising the odds of spillage.

"Some 30 percent have hazardous materials in them. They're not just spilling Nikes," he said.

_Schadenfreude_ · « **Reply #1 on:** July 11, 2003, 02:08:27 PM »

Yep I can believe it - lost 3 40ft fcl's on the Hong Kong to Sakhalin island run ( Siberia north of Japan) in one year of trading.

-dead- · « **Reply #2 on:** July 11, 2003, 02:25:56 PM »

Yes I'd concur too. Michael Grey - a serious shipping correspondent's shipping correspondent for Lloyd's list - is forever whinging about lashings not being good enough on panamax and post-panamax box ships (Layman translation: the really big buggers). And given the sheer numbers of TEUs handled per year 10,000 is a tiny proportion. Hong Kong was the world's busiest container port in 2001, handling 17.8 million TEUs (about 35 containers a minute). That's the equivalent of 17,800,000 20ft Containers (TEU=20ft Equivalent Unit - so Schadenfreude's loss represents 6 TEU) - 10,000 isn't even 0.1% of that. And that's only one port - Singapore was a very close second that year, so 10,000 a year is a surprising low loss rate, really.

Swoop · « **Reply #3 on:** July 11, 2003, 04:10:22 PM »

They're a bugger though.

See, containers float....but only just. They generally float just below the water line where you can't see them unless you're right on top of them. Ships don't have a problem with all these floating hazards around though, since they float they get pushed out of the way of all the big stuff.

Small ships though have a problem. In fact only the year before last a 50ft boat going from Holland to Britain disappeared in the middle of the North Sea. Took a container hit below the water line and sank.

Octavius · « **Reply #4 on:** July 11, 2003, 04:24:21 PM »

They should buy a small "fish finder" type sonar device and point it forward.

udet · « **Reply #5 on:** July 11, 2003, 04:37:12 PM »

yeah I'd imagine you could make alot of money if you could track that stuff-but then, the owners could retrive them

Curval · « **Reply #6 on:** July 11, 2003, 05:01:49 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Swoop
They're a bugger though.

Sure are....lots of small stuff gets sunk every year by them as you said.

Udet...that would make for a whole lotta paperwork and problems regarding insurance payments already made for lost containers.

Besides...they are probably scrap after being in the water that long. But..you could be right. Maybe the insurance companies could recover some costs at least. Doubt it though...probably cost too much to retrieve each one.

Karnak · « **Reply #7 on:** July 11, 2003, 05:24:43 PM »

That may be what my aunt's boat hit coming back from Hawaii in the '70s. My uncle (dad's twin) died on one of the life boats.

It seems to me that somebody could make a tidy sum of money if they could come up with a practical, cost effective method to reduce the number of containers lost at sea.

Swoop · « **Reply #8 on:** July 11, 2003, 06:04:40 PM »

yeah, see, it's the practical and cost effective part of the requirement that's the problem......

Bodhi · « **Reply #9 on:** July 11, 2003, 08:38:50 PM »

I have a friend who lost an FW190 fuselage and a heap of 109 parts 2 years ago when they were washed overboard by a vicious NorEaster. Saw pictures of the ship after it reached port... lucky the whole thing didn't just turn kettle and lose the whole lot.

oohhh, and FYI, the Coast Guard sinks floating containers all the time with gunfire.

rc51 · « **Reply #10 on:** July 11, 2003, 10:37:41 PM »

Just more toejam dumped into our oceans.

Reschke · « **Reply #11 on:** July 12, 2003, 12:09:19 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Karnak
It seems to me that somebody could make a tidy sum of money if they could come up with a practical, cost effective method to reduce the number of containers lost at sea.

They aren't really secured in any heavy duty way. They tend to be stacked on top of each other and the weight is what they (shipping companies) hope will be enough to hold them down. They do have some strapping on each stacked section but not enough to stop one of our open top 40 footers from going over with 50,000 lbs of steel pipe and elbows in it.

We got very lucky last year with a container that only took a hit from one going overboard off the coast of France. They lost 65 containers off that boat and then it had to be towed into Charleston, SC after the storm off the coast of Brittany.