Even though uncertainty around transport and trade remained an overriding concern in the past year, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that roughly 80% of global trade by volume and 70% by value is still transported by sea, reports Marine Traffic.
Massive Cargo vessels
At the moment, there are thousands of containerships continuously operating on the world’s seas and waterways, providing vital supplies to communities around the globe.
More specifically, over 17,600 cargo vessels among which 3,869 containerships (>1,000 gross tonnage with the latest position received from AIS within the last 24 hours) were found on the MarineTraffic database at the time of writing.
According to UNCTAD’s latest Review of Maritime Transport 2020, “over the past 20 years, vessel sizes have been increasing to optimize costs through economies of scale. Average bulker and container ship sizes have grown significantly since the 1990s – the average size of container ships has more than doubled since 1996. The distribution of average sizes across vessel types suggests that the average capacity of vessels built in the last four years is much greater than those built 20 years ago.”
“For example,” the reports writes, “compared with vessels built 20 years ago, the average capacity of container ships now is four times greater; of general cargo ships, three times greater; and of bulk carriers, two times greater.”
But could someone assume that having larger boxships crossing the oceans could be translated into an increased risk of incidents worldwide, where containers could be washed overboard spilling their contents into the seas?
‘A downward trend’
Well, the answer is that container loss is a multi-faceted threat which the container industry has continuously worked on addressing.
The World Shipping Council (WSC) has released their 2020 update, and based on their findings, there is a downward trend compared to the decade prior. In the 2017-2019 period, an average of 779 containers were lost every year in total (considering both non-catastrophic and catastrophic losses).
“Containers lost overboard represent less than one thousandth of 1% of the roughly 226 million containers currently shipped each year,” the report says.
So even though accidents with containerships losing boxes are, according to experts, relatively rare, during these past four months, incidents have been on the rise with most of them taking place in the Pacific.
Oftentimes, all it takes is a moment of bad weather at sea to send a boxship overboard, let alone more rare events like ship groundings, structural failures, or even collisions.
Toys washed overboard freighter & lost at sea
Who hasn’t heard of the story of the “Friendly Floatees,” the thousands of plastic ducks that made headlines worldwide when they “escaped” from a container lost in the Pacific in 1992 before they ended up floating ashore on beaches across the entire world?
Since that day, almost 30 years ago when they were found at sea, the yellow ducks have “travelled” the globe as many have washed up on the shores of Hawaii, Alaska, South America, Australia and the Pacific Northwest, others made their way as far as Scotland and Newfoundland in the Atlantic and some interestingly enough have been found frozen in the ice of the Arctic.
Only five years later, on February 13 of 1997, nearly 4.8 million Lego toy parts fell overboard from the Tokio Express container ship in a storm off Land’s End; many of which are still washing ashore today.
Ships suffering container spills nowadays
Fast forward to some decades later, and following some more similar accidents, we’re looking at the most recent case of a box-spill; that of the Portuguese-flagged MSC ARIES. On February 2, 2021, we read about a 14,300 TEU containership which lost part of her cargo, most probably 41 empty containers, on January 29 during an overboard incident in the north Pacific on her way back from the US to China.
Check the Past Track of the specific voyage in the picture below:
Just less than a fortnight earlier, on Saturday of January 16, almost 750 containers were reportedly lost in the South Pacific storm while the 13,100 TEU MAERSK Essen was en route from Xiamen to Los Angeles, becoming the second box spill in the first month of 2021
On January 2, 2021, the Ever Liberal encountered strong winds off the south of Kyushu, while the 8,452 TEU Post Panamax ship was sailing to Los Angeles after leaving the Port of Busan. According to sources, 36 containers were washed overboard and released into the high seas during this incident.
Below, there is a screenshot of the vessel’s voyage, based on AIS data:
The disappearance of ONE Apus
Another vessel lost sections of her load in the Pacific on Monday, November 30, 2020. The ONE Apus, after encountering severe weather and losing freight at sea, would cautiously proceed to the port of Kobe, Japan with an ETA of on December 8.
Check her Past Track here:
Back to November 4, 2020, the ONE Aquila was heading to her next port call, when she experienced a container loss due to the bad weather off the US coast. Luckily, the containership with a carrying capacity of 14,052 TEU suffered only a limited number of container loss, reports say.
As reported in the World Shipping Council – Update 2020, even though the percentage of losses is pretty low in relation to total shipments, “the liner shipping industry remains committed to continuing to partner with governments and other stakeholders to enhance container safety in order to further reduce the number of containers lost at sea” not only for the safety of the crew, the freight and the market but for the benefit of the environment too.
Vessel Tracking
If you want to keep track of containership positions around the world, and monitor the global trade flows, while enjoying access to weather layers and even plan optimised routes for your voyages, trust the world leader in vessel tracking and maritime analytics.
On MarineTraffic, you can track and monitor any type of vessel you are interested in, discover one vessel’s particulars, including capacity, machinery, photos and ownership. Register to access vessel details of the current voyage of a ship including position, port calls, destination, ETA and distance travelled, a ship’s IMO, MMSI, or call sign, all vital information to the shippers of the world.
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Source: Marine Traffic
