Lost at Sea: What Happens to Shipping Containers that go Overboard

Shipping containers end up in the ocean all the time. Find out what can happen to these rogue shipping containers.

With technology advancing at an exponential rate, boats have gotten bigger to accommodate larger amounts of goods. Presently, there are container ships that can carry over 20,000 20ft shipping containers. At this moment, there are millions of containers in transit on the ocean. Naturally, there is no way to fully protect containers and there are instances where containers end up in the ocean. It is estimated that between 2,500 and 10,000 shipping containers are lost to the ocean each year.

In 2013, The MOL Comfort container ship sank in the Indian Ocean along with the 5,578 containers it was carrying.

What Happens to the Lost Containers and their Contents?

This is largely an unanswered question. One example is when around 30,000 floating rubber animal bath toys were lost in the pacific in 1992. For years, plastic ducks and frogs washed ashore in America, South America, Australia, and eventually Europe.

For the most part, nobody knows what happens to these containers or the effect they have on the deep ocean floor environment. There are no requirements for shipping lines to track, sink, or retrieve shipping containers to fall into the sea.

Containers at the Bottom of the Ocean

A rare occurrence of locating a container on the ocean floor happened in 2004 when the Med Taipei lost 15 containers to a winter storm. The containers fell into Monterey Bay, a National Marine Sanctuary. Later that year, scientists discovered one of the shipping containers intact on the ocean floor 4,200’ below the surface. This began a rare study to see how life reacts to deep-sea pollution conducted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The organisms of the ocean can make anything into a home, shipwrecks can provide a home for creatures hiding from predators. The container in Monterey Bay acts as an artificial reef for some animals, tubeworms and scallops fixed themselves to the hard surface of the container required for them to live on. Since 2004, scientists have continued to monitor the effects of the container on the ocean floor. In 2014 scientists reported that the container encouraged a higher number of predators on the otherwise flat ocean floor.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Icebergs or Shipping Containers

Because containers do contain air, they are somewhat buoyant. Refrigerated containers, in particular, take a considerable amount of time to sink beneath the ocean surface. Since containers can take so long to sink, they post the potential of an unseen hazard to other boaters.

During a race around the world in 2017, French boat Le Souffle du Nord went head-on with a shipping container. The container damaged the hull about 200 miles off the coast of New Zealand.

One Company Makes a Commitment to Lost Cargo

On January 2 of 2019, 270 containers were lost along the coast of Germany and the Netherlands. They were in the possession of the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC). In the days to follow, shoes, car parts, toys, and computer chips were found across the coast of Germany and the Netherlands. In response to this incident, MSC decided to pledge to pay the cost of cleaning up the containers and help in the coordination and search of the lost containers.

As you can see, it is not uncommon for shipping containers to end up in the ocean and there are no regulations about what to do with them. In the future, hopefully, there are more companies like MSC who care about the effects of their mistakes.

From a shipment owners perspective, if you lose your shipment it is always best to have marine cargo insurance. Losing shipping containers is a very common part of the international trade process, so it is important to protect yourself when your goods are lost to the ocean.