10,000 Shipping Containers Lost At Sea Each Year 163
kkleiner writes "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. This month the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container that was lost in the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004. What's happened to the sunken shipment in the past seven years? It's become a warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor, providing a new habitat for species that might otherwise not be attracted to the area."
"Lost" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:"Lost" (Score:4, Informative)
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I would guess, from where we're looking, first take the precarious looking ones at the top-right, then start from the top-left and work to the bottom-right. This is based on my Jenga experience.
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Ja^H^H the companys through with you! He has no use for smu^H^H^H Captains who drop their shipments at the first sign of an Imper^H^H^H^H Cargo Container collapse.
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How would you do that? It's not like the ship has a crane capable of lifting them. And even if it had, who's going to climb on that half-collapsed pile over and over again to attach it to one container at a time, then unlocking the container from it's neighbours, possibly triggering another collapse (which might sink the ship, BTW).
They aren't lost one at a time... (Score:2, Interesting)
They overload container vessels on purpose, raising the center of gravity of the ship. If there is smooth sailing, you make millions extra a year. If you hit rough seas, you cut loose your entire top layer of containers, lower your COG, and still come out ahead in the grand scheme of it all.
1 an hour...as an average. Reality would be more like every 100 hours 100 containers get cut loose.
Re:They aren't lost one at a time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also you should never, ever, ever ship something without insurance if you can't afford the loss.
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The top layers can only take really light containers, so I bet that those would be cheap.. especially if there has been a lot of heavy containers booked, and cell space is going to waste.
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Hmm so it's like those truck-delivery missions in Just Cause 2 (IIRC the GTA series has similar missions too). Better to drive like a nut and go for the big rewards than to go slow and end up wasting your time.
I'll keep that in mind next time I ship something by sea.
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I wonder how many of those 10,000 are really lost and how many are "lost."
I got this container of LCD televisions hea', great price, just for you. Where'd it come from? It fell of the back of a boat, that's all I'm sayin'.
Re:"Lost" (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly (Score:2)
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Re:"Lost" (Score:4, Funny)
And another 47 series of Lost.
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It's not that hard to offload cargo from on ship to another at sea, it's been done for hundreds of years.
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It's not that hard to offload cargo from on ship to another at sea, it's been done for hundreds of years.
True, naval vessels have been doing underway replenishments for years, but not with containers. Transferring cargo between two moving ships using lines and hoses is hard enough. Container ships don't have the cranes needed to move them, and it's a pretty precise operation even when the platforms are stable in port.
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The only issue with that is that it's only viable to be done with the topmost cargo containers. Remember these containers are stacked vertically. If the valuable stuff is at the bottom, you can't crack it open, loot it, and dump the container overboard without first dumping the containers above it to make it look like an accident.
Thus, you pay off someone to load the most valuable stuff on top.
Re:"Lost" (Score:4, Interesting)
It is probably for that reason that valuables are loaded under deck.
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The only issue with that is that it's only viable to be done with the topmost cargo containers.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why only 10000 shipping containers are lost each year ;).
Perhaps someone should do a study to see if putting the "less juicy" containers on top reduces the "loss" rates. ;)
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I've unreped conex containers many times. Container ships also happen to have cranes, follow this link for one example.
http://pixdaus.com/pics/1269222332cwH2vvh.jpg [pixdaus.com]
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It's even easier to change the label on a container.
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Good luck with that, there are tamper seals placed on those containers by customs at the port of origin.
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It's actually pretty tricky. The ships have to match speed and direction (you can't just sit still or the ships will drift), and I've certainly never heard of anything the size of a cargo container being transferred. You can't just toss them around with a crane because it will change your center of gravity, possibly significantly. Basically the "modern" technique is the same as the ancient technique -- you throw or shoot a light rope across which is tied to a heavier cable, and then you ferry stuff back
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Like Obama's real birth certificate? j/k
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Some ships have onboard cranes that can lift containers onto smaller vessels, I saw them doing it on an episode of "salvage code red" (they were removing the containers to reduce weight and get the beached ship out)
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A container doesn't just tumble off a stack into the water, either, but that's the only alternative explantion.
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I wish you were a level-character in the Psychonauts sequel.
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Narwhals.
Not sea-unicorns, narwhals. And yes, they do engage in banditry on the high seas.
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Or the way all contraband in the world, drugs and weapons and small frightened slaves, are shipped from country to country. "Lost" in the ocean.
Not just aquatic habitats... (Score:2)
But on land too!
http://containerhouse.info/ [containerhouse.info]
100,000 sneakers in that container? (Score:2)
So, are there 100,000 sneakers in that container? What happens if we open it?
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Shoepocolypse?
Similar idea, but on the surface (Score:3)
I watched a documentary that suggested that artificial "floating reefs" be set out on the open ocean where biological deserts have formed to establish this type of habitat. The idea came from all the sea life attracted to the shelter of flotsom.
I'm not a biologist, but I am curious if these open ocean deserts are man made or just nature. Hard to imagine the latter from what I've read in historical accounts of the oceans.
Re:Similar idea, but on the surface (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not a biologist, but I am curious if these open ocean deserts are man made or just nature.
They will most likely be naturally occurring "deserts". I know that some sea cucumbers are protandric - they can change gender if required. I guess when traversing the sea floor it can take a long time to come across another sea cucumber. So when this happens, and they are both of the same gender, one changes gender allowing them to procreate. This quality would not have evolved without large desert like expanses in the ocean.
Current human activities do not appear to be effecting the deserts so much as they are effecting the ocean's oases - the coral reefs. Higher temperatures, increased CO2 levels, and fishing are all destroying these ecological hotspots.
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Not necessarily a direct answer, but this academic presentation is incredibly eye-opening and well worth a watch:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html [ted.com]
Re:Similar idea, but on the surface (Score:4, Informative)
Yes they are natural and have been for a long time. They are not lifeless just have a lower density of life. Almost all life starts with plant life. plant life needs sun light and nutrients So in the deep mid ocean what plants you have near the surface when they die sink to the bottom. When fish eat the waste sinks. When the the fish that dies eats them they sink. So you have have the energy source and the nutrients separated by miles of water column. Unless you have vertical currents there is not much mixing. BTW the richest locations in the sea are where deep water raises to the surface. So yes they are natural because they are caused by the laws of physics. Kind of like how there really isn't much life above 1700 meters in the atmosphere unless there is some kind of land sticking up.
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Ocean deserts are natural. They exist because wherever there are nutrients in seawater, you get plankton growth. It grows and grows and grows until all that can be eaten is eaten. Then they die and sink to the bottom. The result is that a desert forms unless the nutrients are continually replenished. The replenishment happens naturally from rivers or coastal upwellings of deep seawater, but most of the open ocean is completely dead.
One benefit of building OTEC plants is that they circulate deep water back t
One more thing (Score:5, Informative)
To add: If the Captain of any vessel orders it, (in an emergency) any containers they are carrying can be jettisoned to ensure the ship's safety.
Having worked helping customers move their personal possessions overseas, (mainly for oil & telecommunications companies) I can tell you we very rarely mention it. I have had many people as me if they can pack their kids in with their sofas though.
wessel (Score:3)
nope, still pronouncing 'vessel' in my head as 'wessel'. Damn them and their multicultural crew.
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Did somebody say nuclear wessel [wikipedia.org]?
Re:One more thing (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an even more unpleasant truth about international ocean shipping: essentially the shipping company is not liable for the 'disposed' containers, either. If the shipping company has enough losses on a vessel to declare a "General Average", then the compensation for the losses (including vessel damage, if any) are assessed against the other *customers* with cargo on that vessel.
Basically, the vessel is carrying the cargo as a courtesy; any risk of loss belongs to the owners of the cargo(es) collectively, NOT to the carrier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average [wikipedia.org]
So as a forwarding agent, not only do you get the pleasure of telling someone that their container of goods has been lost, you get to tell them that
a) they still have to pay freight shipping costs, AND
b) they're going to be legally liable for their 'share' of whatever the general average costs work out to be
Oh it's great fun.
Re:One more thing (Score:5, Funny)
And that is why these guys [cargolaw.com] recommend shipping insurance (there are many others in their business, I'm sure). They also maintain the Gallery of Transport Loss [cargolaw.com], with photos of the disasters that have occurred to various ships and freight airplanes, which for some reason I find terrifically amusing.
It's also an example of terrible web design (on every page you have to scroll down a long way to get to the actual content). Nevertheless it's worth navigating in any case for a couple of hours of pictures of ships on the beach, ships sinking, ships struck by hurricanes, ships losing containers, etc.
A couple of examples:
towboat pulled under a bridge, rolled upside down, and comes up on the other side [cargolaw.com]
M/V APL China [cargolaw.com] struck by hurricane, limps into port with containers hanging over the side.
Last but not least, a day at the beach [cargolaw.com] turns into four months. Truly amazing pictures of people walking up the beach next to a huge container carrier
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I imagine that container "berths" towards the center of the ship would demand a higher price because there's less chance of them being tossed (or accidentally falling overboard) than those at the sides and top of
Sharks with fricken iphones (Score:3, Funny)
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... or ill tempered sea bass with frikken hello kitty laser pointers attached to their heads.
Human Trafficking? (Score:2)
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Creepy. Like right out of Amistad [youtube.com].
A-HA! (Score:3)
I knew all that global warming stuff was nonsense. Now we know the REAL reason sea levels are rising - it's simply displacement of 10,000 cargo containers' worth of water every year!
After all, all that water has to go SOMEWHERE...
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Just in case anyone was inclined to take you seriously.
For a moment or two there, I thought you had.
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It's not just at sea! (Score:2)
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The Big Mac containers lost in my apartment have attracted new life, as well!
I find your claim insightful - "Big Mac" containers are the only life-attracting aspect of the product
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Well known hazard to yachties (Score:5, Informative)
Many of these tend to float pretty much at surface level for days or even weeks. With surface waves, they are impossible to see from small craft but of course are massive and hard. They are a very well known hazard to cruising folk crossing oceans, and will readily hole and sink a fibreglass yacht, or even knock a keel off. Forward-looking sonar, if you've got it, can't see them because of waves.
There are thousands of people crossing oceans in smallish boats, and every year a few of them go missing due to shipping containers. They very thought of them makes a cruising yachtie's blood run cold.
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Are the automatic sinking valves out there yet? I thought I read about 10 years ago about a gizmo that would be installed into a container that would have a couple radios in it. One would sense the ship's radio (or that it's been removed from the ship and not disabled). In that case, the second radio would be a transmitter beacon, to help locate the missing cargo container if it's fallen off a ship (and has sufficiently valuable contents). It would also be detectable by other ocean vessels. When the ba
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Or, did I just dream that one up?
Probably not, but consider the economics: millions of containers, 0.1% loss rate, hundreds of dollars in hardware that has to be maintained (batteries swapped out once every few years at the very least.) Who is goiing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a problem they don't have?
Then consider the politics: the only way you'd make this fly would be with a global treaty requiring it, which would be opposed by a small number of wealthy and well-organized companies and championed by a few disorga
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Then consider the politics: the only way you'd make this fly would be with a global treaty requiring it
Not really. Consider that California makes some silly requirement for a car, and all 50 US states, and sometimes Canada, wind up receiving cars designed like that.
If, say, the US required this for all containers coming into its ports, that might create a new worldwide standard (as the costs of tracking non-compliant containers would become a factor).
And in this case, the costs would be passed along to all
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Are the automatic sinking valves out there yet? I thought I read about 10 years ago about a gizmo that would be installed into a container that would have a couple radios in it. One would sense the ship's radio (or that it's been removed from the ship and not disabled). In that case, the second radio would be a transmitter beacon, to help locate the missing cargo container if it's fallen off a ship (and has sufficiently valuable contents). It would also be detectable by other ocean vessels. When the battery was about to run out on the transmitter beacon, the last thing it would do would be to blow a valve, causing the container to sink.
The additional logistics would consist of checking in and out a container when it was put on a ship, electronically registering it to the ship - not terribly hard to implement or integrate. Countries could require these valves for entry at their ports.
Or, did I just dream that one up?
If you *din't* dream it up - then it's pretty cool. If you *did* - you should go patent it.
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If you *din't* dream it up - then it's pretty cool. If you *did* - you should go patent it.
Well, if I did, thanks, though this comment thread can stand as prior art. :) I'm a big fan of Mercedes releasing its airbag technology into the public domain, so this would be similar.
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Don't worry, I'm sure your millions of dollars will warm that blood right back up.
Not everyone who cruises is rich. I doubt even the majority would count as such. A lot of people who cruise want to get away from it all because they don't deal with "it all" very well, and people like that are rarely rich.
Container holding 50,000 iPads lost at sea (Score:2)
... and 7 years later, a new breed of octopus will be discovered, one that lives exclusively on meals [amazon.com] ordered from Amazon.
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It's not just containers that get lost (Score:3)
I've seen a statistic somewhere, I think it was from Lloyds, which states that, on average, one ship gets lost per day somewhere in the world (I believe it included hijacking and piracy) . These are mostly small ships, but given that an occasional container ship goes missing, I wonder how many of the containers are lost due to entire ships sinking.
I also wonder how much theft and smuggling contributes to the number of 'lost' containers
Stop the whining. (Score:5, Funny)
ObNeal Stephenson (Score:2)
Quote from "Zodiac":
"They claim that this junk was going to become a habitat for marine life. You don't buy that?"
Bless her, she did know how to blow my lid. "Rebecca, goddamnit, since the beginning of time, every corporation that has ever thrown any of its shit into the ocean has claimed that it was going to become a habitat for marine life. It’s the goddamn ocean, Rebecca. That's where all the marine life is. Of course it's going to become a habitat for marine life."
oh noes! we're all doomed! (Score:2)
Did anyone else pick up on the bizarre doom-mongering going on in TFA?
To quote:
We lose a few (relatively speaking) containers a year.
These containers are a product of a new technology.
Aquatic species use these containers to live in, and might spread to new areas where they would affect the ecology
ALL NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE DANGEROUS AND WE MUST BE SCARED OF THEM!
I understand that in order to get any MSM attention these days there must be an overwhelming imperative involving the destruction of all we hold sacred, but this is stretching a point surely?
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So THAT'S what happened to my flying car. (Score:2)
BS, I say it's on purpose... (Score:2)
Well, let's say you are the captain of a ship and need to make extra cash cus they just don't pay you that much, and lets say some said company is willing to pay xxx amount of dollars, to drop a shipping container on purpose containing yyy garbage in it....could be toxic or not, but in the end, it costs less to make it appear like an accident and that we end up leaving the garbage at the bottom of the sea, because, if it would happen to be say IMPORTANT STUFF THAT A COMPANY OWNS OR PERSONAL BELONGINGS, we w
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I understand what you say, and would agree this is the best view one could have for a proper reason for things to disappear, but we all know as soon as a vulnerability is found in any system, it is exploited...I am just stating that this could be used to dispose of special materials that could end up contaminating the ocean....ie - nuclear waste.
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no, it could not be used for nuclear waste that is so toxic people would want to hide it.
Maybe you should fucking read up on nuclear waste, storage, management, as well as the pesky details on proper transportation.
or you can jst bask in your ignorance and stupidity and we will go with people disposing oh highly toxic and tracked waste can predict the weather well enough to know when a storm is coming. They can also dictate to the union crane operators where to but the box, tell the captain how to ballast t
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Wow, what a lot of rubbish you need to spew out of that small mind of yours.....if only you knew the evils of which man is capable.....I see we have not experienced first hand again that possibility....or to think that the US is the only country in the world...of course there could be ships out there leaving the port of India, of which is barely monitored, and of which the tracking number of a few containers is the only clue as to knowing what those containers might hold, and that coming from another countr
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We do know about, have known about it. There is nothing 'shocking' or new in the article to anyone who ahs spent more the 20 minutes dealing with shipping logistics.
This is not new, surprising, unsuspected. It's accounted for by accountants, shippers, inspectors and so on. PLUS that would really be lot of waste anyways.
You are not thinking outside the box, you are becoming an unthinking, knee jerk, reactionary loon.
I would love for you to actually start thinking.
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wow you again, you must be following my posts immensely.....i guess you like me....wow I have a fan....following me like a little lap dog....cool, ok here is one for you....
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Top Heavy (Score:2)
Human trafficking (Score:2)
I've heard about people being snuck into various countries by being "loaded" into shipping containers. I now have to wonder how many are at the bottom of the ocean whether by choice (illegal immigration), or not (human trafficking). Whoops sorry, your Filipino Mail-Order Bride was lost at sea. No refunds.
yet another reason (Score:2)
to boycott goods from overseas.
Greens are wrong (Score:2)
See, the environmentalists are wrong. If 10,000 containers are good, then surely 100,000 containers would be better. Clearly we should be dumping our trash in the sea.
UPS Tracking Info... (Score:2)
Left UPS facility
In transit
A warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor
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Clownfish seem to nest among rusted Huffy bicycles, almost naturally. And those plastic utensils? a container fill of 7.5 million Dixie Sporks is a haven for krill shrimp and barnacles.
Funny. They didn't used to ship those things in to the US.
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Are you sure about that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Reef#Failure [wikipedia.org]
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Thanks for the excellent link.
I think if you were dealing with one factory for all your product and you only had one warehouse to receive the goods, DDP might make sense.
But suppose you work for a large sportswear company and you contract with several footwear and apparel factories in a country. On top of that, you may have more than one major warehouse and may also ship some product directly to the warehouses of your largest customers. In that case, you're probably better off with FOB because then you ha
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I would call that an unimpressive figure, even non-newsworthy
And yet if one of those containers fell on you it would be impressive indeed. It's all about perspective.
We have this issue in any number of areas. Global capitalism is just so damned productive, such a powerful amplifier of human capability, that even small inefficiencies can result in significant consequences. This has been the argument around reprocessing nuclear fuel for decades: even at 0.1% loss rates, we would still have the potential for hundreds of kilograms of plutonium going "missing" every y
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yeah, but it isn't argued by intelligent experts, only by politician and greenpeace.
Stop your stupid fear mongering.
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Did you read all the commentary about the subject too or did you just read a news article? If you read it on BBC, then you have missed the whole point of Slashdot, which is the commentary.