Over the years, Russ Lewis has found numerous items along the coast of Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state: from bicycle helmets, to balls, to colorful water guns. And countless crocs.
If you find one Crocs slipper, you might think someone lost it on the beach, he says, adding: “But if you find two, three, four and they’re different – one big, one small – that’s a clue.”
“It definitely fell out of the dumpster, when you find more of the same thing more than once,” explains Lewis, a retired environmentalist.
These items are not like the used fishing gear, beer cans and other similar items left behind by fishermen or beach party goers, which Lewis also finds. It is about the remains of cargo from large containers for overseas transport that have fallen from ships.
Containers are used to transport almost all goods and raw materials that humanity uses today, from t-shirts and phones, to televisions and hospital beds, over long distances. All of this is packed into large metal boxes the size of tractor trailers and loaded onto ships.
Joe Kramek from the organization World Transport Council says that in 2023 alone, 250 million containers were transferred by transport ships.
However, not all of these goods reach their destination.
According to the Council, more than 20,000 shipping containers have fallen into the sea in the past 15 years – although some environmentalists and experts say that number could be much higher because the organization’s information does not cover the entire industry, and there are no penalties for those who do not. report the loss of the container.
Cargo ships can lose from one to several hundred containers due to rough seas or other problems they face. Most of the containers end up on the seabed and are never recovered, some sealed and closed, some damaged and opened. Their various contents wash up on the shores, poisoning ponds and animal habitats.
There is no obligation to remove the container from the sea
A large part of the objects that washed up on Lewis’s beach correspond to the cargo lost from the giant cargo ship “ONE Apus” in November 2020. When the ship ran into a storm during its voyage from China to California, nearly 2,000 containers slipped into the Pacific.
Court documents and shipping industry reports show the ship was carrying bicycle helmets valued at more than $100,000, as well as thousands of boxes of Crocs, as well as electronics, batteries and fireworks.
Researchers mapped the ship’s wreckage to several Pacific coasts thousands of miles away, including Lewis Beach and remote Midway Atoll, a national refuge for millions of seabirds near the Hawaiian Islands, where the Crocs also ended up.
“They started appearing in the fall of 2021 and in 2022. There were a lot of crocs, and I found some even this year, small pink ones. I don’t know why they appeared so late,” says Luis.
According to him, he found a calling for himself to “give something back to the beach and pick up all this trash that comes out.” Everything you can find in landfills is also in the ocean. And when the conditions are right, some of it ends up on the beach.”
Scientists and environmentalists say that more work should be done to keep records of sunken containers, as well as to prevent leakage of their contents.
“Just because it may seem like ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ that doesn’t mean there aren’t major ecological consequences,” says marine biologist Andrew Devogeler of California’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, who has spent more than 15 years studying the environmental impact of a container that was found in protected waters.
The container fell from the ship Med Taipei during a storm in February 2004, and was found at a depth of about 1,280 meters. The ship’s owners and operators reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice to pay an estimated $3.25 million in damages to the marine environment.
“The first thing that happens is they sink to the bottom and crush everything underneath,” says DeVogeler. By changing the water flow and sediments at that location, the container completely changes the micro-ecosystem around it – affecting seabed animals that scientists are still discovering.
“Animals in the deep sensed our presence before we knew anything about them,” DeVogeler said.
The remains of the ship “President Eisenhower”, which lost 24 containers in February, also reached the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Among other things, they transported bales of cotton, and the cleaning process took a long time and endangered the animals that have a habitat there, such as seals.
Although the ship’s operators helped pay for the cleanup, neither California nor federal authorities ordered the company to pay any fines.
The US Coast Guard has limited authority and cannot ask ship owners to retrieve sunken containers unless they contain oil or hazardous materials.
“If it’s out of our jurisdiction, there’s nothing we can do as a federal government to ask the company to take over the container,” said Chris Payne, a Coast Guard lieutenant in San Francisco.
Bigger ships – bigger risks
This year’s summer winds washed thousands of plastic pellets ashore near Colombo, Sri Lanka, three years after a major fire aboard the X-Press Pearl burned for days and eventually sank the ship a few kilometers offshore.
More than 1,400 containers damaged in that disaster ended up in the sea, and in addition to plastic pellets, they transported lead, methanol, nitric acid and sodium hydroxide, which are toxic to marine life.
Soon, thousands of dead fish, nearly 400 dead endangered sea turtles, more than 40 dolphins and six whales were found in the area with their mouths full of plastic.
“It was like a war zone,” says environmentalist and local resident Hemanta Vitanaj.
The cleanup was carried out by teams in protective suits, and the coast was closed for three months. The consequences are felt even today.
“Last week there was a lot of wind and all the beaches were full of plastic again,” Vitanaj said in June.
More than 80% of the amount of goods in international trade is transported by sea, in increasingly large ships.
Today’s largest cargo ships are longer than three football fields, and cranes are needed to lift the containers and stack them up. When this industry took off about 50 years ago, ships could only accommodate about a tenth of the cargo they carry today. According to data from the insurance company “Allianz”, the capacity of container ships has doubled in just the last two decades.
All this brings increased risks. Larger ships are more difficult to maneuver, and in storms there is a greater chance that one of the containers will be damaged or crushed – which causes destabilization and can lead to many other stacked containers falling into the sea.
In February, marine insurer Gard published a study based on six years of claims, which found that 9% of ultra-large ships experienced container losses, compared to just 1% of smaller vessels.
Accidents are often associated with cargo that is incorrectly marked, weighed or stored. Investigators have determined that the X-Press Pearl disaster near Sri Lanka was the result of a fire that likely started from a poorly assembled container leaking nitric acid.
However, cargo ship operators do not have the capacity to verify the weight and contents of each container and must rely on information provided by shippers.
“It’s completely impractical to think you can open every container,” says Jan Lenard, president of the National Cargo Bureau, a nonprofit that works with the U.S. Coast Guard to inspect marine cargo.
In a pilot study, the organization found that mislabeling and improper storage meant that nearly 70% of shipping containers arriving in the U.S. containing dangerous goods failed the bureau’s safety inspection.
“Despite all these problems, most of the time the cargo arrives safely,” Lenard said.
It all becomes much more complicated, with disastrous consequences, when a problem occurs – the ship gets caught in a storm or the chemicals on board catch fire in the summer heat.
The exact number – nor the consequences – of sunken containers is not known
There is no precise data on how often the contents fall out of the container. The data of the World Transport Council, whose members transport about 90% of global cargo with containers and report losses every year, are most often cited.
During the 16 years of data collection, ending in 2023, an average of 1,480 containers fell into the sea annually, although the number appears to be decreasing. In 2022, 650 containers were lost, and in 2023 only about 200.
Experts and environmentalists say the real figure is likely higher and that self-reporting is not enough because it is not mandatory.
For example, the 2023 figure does not include the 1,300 containers that fell off the ship Angel in Taiwan because the ship’s operators are not members of the World Transport Council.
Joe Kramek, the organization’s president and CEO, says the industry is exploring ways to reduce errors in loading and stacking containers, as well as navigating ships through rough waters.
“We don’t like when that (container loss) happens,” says Kramek. “But the maritime environment is one of the most challenging environments to work in.”
Earlier this year, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization adopted amendments to two global ocean treaties aimed at increasing transparency around lost shipping containers. The changes, which are expected to take effect in 2026, will require ships to report losses to nearby coastal countries and the authorities where the ship is registered.
However, without the ability to impose fines, it remains to be seen how much operators will comply.
Alfredo Parokvin-Olson, head of the International Maritime Organization’s maritime security department, says: “We just encourage them and tell them how important it is, but we can’t be the police.”
Environmentalists are most concerned about the impact of sunken containers – and their contents – on the environment. At this time, the long-term consequences of a large number of containers ending up on the seabed every year are not known.
“It is now at the bottom of the ocean. I think that’s a big problem. What’s going on down there?” asks Luis. “Yes, we know we have a problem on the surface, but I think the bigger problem is what’s at the bottom of the sea.”
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Source: www.vijesti.me
