Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea over the last decade, according to a report on Thursday, Oct. 3, by The Associated Press. As ships get bigger, reportedly doubling in capacity in just the past 20 years, the problem is getting worse. Scientists warned that the environmental consequences could be catastrophic.
“We know we got a problem on the surface, but I think the bigger problem is what’s on the seafloor,” Russ Lewis, a retired ecologist, said.
Lewis has found everything from mismatched Croc shoes to squirt guns, and he said he knows it’s from shipments lost at sea.
“That’s definitely a container spill when you find more of the same thing more than once,” Lewis said. “If you find it three or four times, that kind of strikes me that it’s a container spill. Plus, it has some biofouling on it.”
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It’s not an easy fix as ships are essential to people’s needs. Shipping containers are used to move the majority of the world’s everyday items over long distances in enormous quantities.
“Containerized shipping is essentially the box, and so, they come in 20 feet, and that’s where you hear the abbreviation TEU for 20-foot equivalent, but many are 40 feet long,” Joe Kramek, the president and CEO of the World Shipping Council, said. “And these boxes have revolutionized world trade because they’re easy to pack. They’re easy to load in most cases, and just by way of example, 250 million containers were moved by containerized shipping last year.”
As a result, scientists believe there is likely a graveyard of containers at the bottom of the sea. What happens to the environment because of them is still being studied. However, researchers do know that a shipping container that tumbled overboard in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004 changed an entire ecosystem surrounding it on the seafloor.
It was not the only container to go overboard. More than 20,000 shipping containers have reportedly fallen off ships in the past decade. However, many experts note that the number may be much higher due to lack of reporting and incomplete data.
The contents of parcels have poisoned fisheries and land habitats, and there are limited legal consequences. Scientists and environmentalists want that to change.
“The fact that when it’s on the high seas, there is no kind of liability, and there is no obligation of reporting about that kind of loss,” Antidia Citores, who works with the Surfrider Foundation Europe, said.
Environmental advocates are pushing for more tracking of losses and added safeguards to prevent spills. Meanwhile, the United Nations Maritime Organization said it’s doing that by amending two international ocean treaties earlier this year.
“When you lose containers offshore, you have to report that loss to some type of government authority because it’s a hazard to navigation and it might be a pollution hazard depending on what’s inside that,” Kramek said. “And so, you know, what we’re talking about the International Maritime Organization in 2026 will require mandatory reporting, typically, the reporting is required by coastal states.”
However, there are no penalties from the U.N. if the operators choose not to comply, and ship owners argue it’s an impossible task to keep tabs on everything in every container. Ship owners said that they are often at the mercy of the company making the product for proper labeling and information regarding hazardous materials.