Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

[Judi Lynn]

By CHRISTINA LARSON, HELEN WIEFFERING and MANUEL VALDES
Updated 5:35 AM CDT, October 3, 2024

LONG BEACH, Wash. (AP) — Russ Lewis has picked up some strange things along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state over the years: Hot Wheels bicycle helmets with feather tufts, life-size plastic turkey decoys made for hunters, colorful squirt guns.

And Crocs — so many mismatched Crocs. If you find a single Croc shoe, you might think somebody lost it out on the beach, he said. “But, if you find two, three, four and they’re different — you know, one’s a big one, one’s a little one — that’s a clue.” These items aren’t like the used fishing gear and beer cans that Lewis also finds tossed overboard by fishers or partygoers. They’re the detritus of commercial shipping containers lost in the open ocean.

Most of the world’s raw materials and everyday goods that are moved over long distances — from T-shirts to televisions, cellphones to hospital beds — are packed in large metal boxes the size of tractor-trailers and stacked on ships. A trade group says some 250 million containers cross the oceans every year — but not everything arrives as planned.

More than 20,000 shipping containers have tumbled overboard in the last decade and a half. Their varied contents have washed onto shorelines, poisoned fisheries and animal habitats, and added to swirling ocean trash vortexes. Most containers eventually sink to the sea floor and are never retrieved.

More:
https://apnews.com/article/lost-shipping-containers-dali-baltimore-xpress-pearl-68620037992758a714b010345e1937fa

[Drum]

1. Very true! And I cannot help but recall this harrowing scene in the movie: "All Is Lost"

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[OnlinePoker]

2. Here's one of many articles about the spill off the BC coast

A volunteer organization that has been cleaning up debris from a cargo ship that lost 109 containers off the B.C. coast last fall says the incident should be a wake-up call to the need for more urgent action.

Alys Hoyland of the Surfrider Foundation's Pacific Rim chapter in Tofino said urinal mats, coolers and other items that were swept off the MV Zim Kingston in October continue to wash up on the western shore of Vancouver Island.

Debris has been found as far as northeastern Haida Gwaii, hundreds of kilometres from the spill site, and Hoyland said she is concerned that the longer it takes to clean up, the more material will degrade and spread along the coast.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cargo-ship-debris-b-c-coast-1.6374869

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Only a few of the containers actually washed ashore. The ones that sank may end up polluting the shoreline for years to come as they break up.

Some of the cargo on this ship then caught fire near Victoria, BC, which was lucky because there were fire tugs available to spray water on it until it went out.