Shipping Containers Plunge Overboard as Supply Race Raises Risks | Hacker News Reader

Shipping Containers Plunge Overboard as Supply Race Raises Risks

insurancejournal.com

50 pointsystad50 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26987097

So of the circa 3000 containers going overboard last year, 1800 was due to one incident. Containers going overboard is of course a serious issue, but reporting this as ”most in seven years” and as some sort of trend is simply not serious reporting.

likewise, reporting tiny sample sizes (i.e <25) as percentages.

In Scotland we have a saying, "fallen off the back of a lorry (truck)", for when you go to a market and you see an expensive new product going cheap. Which has most likely been stolen.

Maybe we will start seeing "fallen off a ship" goods soon.

"Can I interest you in this RTX 3080 for an unbeatable $1000?"

"That sounds too good to be true! Is that... saltwater corrosion?"

"Dissolved salt is an electrolyte, which means it's good for electronics"

Unfortunately not many goods survive the experience.

If it wasn't for this, where would beach-goers get their classic Garfield phones from?

> In Scotland we have a saying, "fallen off the back of a lorry (truck)"

Aye, I'll take it no questions asked if it's Ion bru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i5W5s7LiMk

Irn Bru. The drink that lists caffeine under "flavourings".

also, it looks more like the liquid they use in glow sticks then a soft drink. I'm not sure how they sneaked the food colouring past the regulators, maybe they gave them some whisky first...

Somebody never had Ecto Cooler as a kid, I see

In The Netherlands we have literaly the same saying, except, it is in Dutch :-)

You missed the boat on that one. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/jan/22/pollutio...

Here in Antwerp (Belgium), with a large port nearby and associated rich history of people loading and unloading all kinds of transport, both "van de camion gevallen" ("fallen off the truck")) and "van de boot gevallen" ("fallen off the boat" (because we often say "boat" when we know very well that large thing we're talking about is actually a ship) have been very common expressions for a long time.

I've never heard someone say "fallen of the train" though.

> In Scotland we have a saying

Also in England. Coincidentally I'm reading a book about the British experience of World War 2 which suggests that the phrase came into widespread usage as a result of the wartime black market economy combined with a truly massive amount of stuff being moved around southern England in the logistics prep for the D-Day landings.

"tombé du camion" was a regular idiom around French housing projects.

Any shady sale was basically assumed to be so.

The thought of all of those containers (containing who knows what) falling into the ocean feels so gross from a pollution standpoint.

Batteries, harsh chemicals - just dissolving into the sea water. Bleh

It's even worse when they fall off close to shore. Last year a small number of containers (around 5 I think) fell off a ship not far north of the Netherlands, close to a very vulnerable and quite rare ecosystem of small islands and tidal plates that are partially submerged during high tide. It's a home for all kinds sea life, birds, a resting area for migrating birds, etc. Some of these containers apparently had stuff like small plastic beads in them, hundreds of thousands of them, which somehow escaped from the container and washed down on the shore. You can imagine how impossible it is to ever clean this up, and what the risk is to wildlife...

I feel like caring about things like this and prioritizing care for the environment should be one of those few things we all can agree needs to be addressed immediately. Sadly, it isn’t.

That is some of the least bad stuff lost in the ocean.

Centuries of sewage. Sunken ships, including nuclear submarines. Unexploded bombs. Chemical weapons. Nuclear waste.

"millions of dollars of cargo sinking to the bottom of the ocean"

If only that were true. Many containers are too light to sink to the bottom, instead they float slightly above or below the surface, posing a tremendious danger to smaller boats. And some of them float for years.

IIRC they do that at their maximum gross weight as well, so an immediately sinking container would be very suspicious.

Then again I don't know how watertight these things are, because I've only ever seen decommissioned ones from the inside.

They often stay floating for months.

All Is Lost[1] follows Robert Redford after a floating shipping container crashes into his yacht. It's very good but a rather harrowing film!

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2017038/

An interesting part is, he essentially does not speak in the film. Perhaps 3 sentences after it starts, all in a brief 1 minute period.

Yet it plays well, and I think really shows off his talent. I'm not sure many other actors could handle such a role.

If you want a true account of survival at sea, I highly recommend Adrift [0] (the book, not the movie). The author's boat was holed by a collision with an unknown object, which he suspected to be a whale, but was unable to confirm. He then proceeded to spend 76 days surviving in an inflatable life raft. I suspect it influenced the premise and plot of the movie somewhat.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrift:_Seventy-six_Days_Los...

Is anyone trying to fish them out?

I am quite surprised that these containers are considered "lost". Aren't they any obligation for the shipping companies to recover those containers ?

How do you propose they do that?

They can't exactly send a boat round to salvage several hundre feu's at 5 miles depth. I imagine it would need coordination from a large number of highly specialized submersibles, mother boats and logistic support to even attempt salvaging one container.

(edit: i just saw another comment which said containers float. but still, imagine a huge ship with a gigantic claw crane, powering along, chasing dozens of container bobbing along, adrift in the ocean. Not happening.)

And then imagine that on seas with 10ft waves, because you don't have containers falling off a ship in good weather.

put a wirelessly charged GPS tracker in the shell of each container.

That sounds like a logistical nightmare. Anyway, knowing exactly where the container is wont help much if its resting on the seabed miles down, or even if it's floating in the middle of the pacific ocean.

We have an ongoing, worldwide, unemployment crisis. Let's put people to work cleaning up the messes big corporations make, on their dime.

Looking at the graphs and knowing how much they are affected by any one major casualty I don't find the hypothesis that many more boxes are being lost due to vessels operating at capacity very well documented.

The idea that "weather is increasingly unpredictable" is also presented as a fact.

That is an established fact with lots of scientific backing that at this stage really shouldn't need any citations each time it is mentioned. Whether there is any proof that that really impacts container loss would be another question though.

Humour me. It's certainly a recent scientific fact, if so.

Is Yale a credible enough source for your curiosities?

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/extreme-weather-events-have-inc...

If that's too recent for you the increase of extreme weather events as a consequence of fossil fuel induced climate change is explicitly stated by the world meteorological organisation back in 2009.

https://public.wmo.int/en/bulletin/weather-and-climate-chang...

Shell oil admitted they knew this back in 1991 and made a video about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-kn...

I can keep going, shell knew back in 1980.

https://mashable.com/2018/04/05/shell-knew-truth-on-global-w...

The fact that Climate change causes an increase in extreme weather events is common knowledge, or should be. Many people on this site have grown up learning about this in school. Though I can't speak for the quality of education that everyone in some unscientific states have recieved. However, the science is irrefutable.

Those are separate problems. Weather can become more extreme without becoming more unpredictable.

I enjoyed your little moment of US exceptionalism, assuming that I am in one of the dumber states, as well as the opening call to authority.

Your references, in order:

1. This would be light on detail for a Medium blog post. "Reported extreme weather events" depends wildly on measurement, reporting, and public communication criteria, none of which is quantified. As another commenter pointed out, "extreme weather" is also not the same thing as "unpredictable weather".

2. Is a largely an investigation of what would happen if global temperatures increased, along with some computer projections of future weather conditions. This is not proof of anything.

3. I'm not sure what to make of this, especially as the original video is not referenced. "Warning of climate change" is not the same as "climate change is happening".

4. This Mashable article, again, does not link the original documents that Shell wrote.

I'm not sure of the status of science education where you live, but referencing pop-sci articles that reference companies that once wrote a report about climate change does not constitute serious research.

Me too. Especially if we compensate for the sharp increase in the quality of prediction and observation technology.

Note that majority seems to be caused by large accidents - 1800 from "One Apus" vs around 3000 for entire 2020.

Spike in 2013 with almost 6000? 4 293 are from sinking of "MOL Comfort".

I wonder whether tiny losses are not reported. Is it possible to lose 1 or 2 containers without triggering runaway losses?

Any loses will be reported, it's just that when a ship gets into bad enough weather to lose one or two containers, it's very unlikely that's all they'll lose, and the higher they stack the crates, the less swaying that has to happen to have containers start falling off.

> That can happen when there’s incorrect weightings on the bills of lading for containers, which many in the industry say happens too often.

32 years since the San Bernardino train disaster[1] and we still can't get an accurate weight or at least assume the containers are carrying their maximum allowable weight.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaster

Why aren't they weighed at ports? Too expensive I'm guessing?

I don't think that's accurate.

VGM[1] has been put in place in 2016 to improve safety. Liners reported high compliance shortly after adoption [2] and [3]. This reporting of self-compliance should of course be taken with a grain of salt.

In addition, as the article mentions, the loss of 3000 containers in 2020 should be compared to the 220+ million shipped each year (2019) [4]. That is less than 0.0014%.

I'm not saying it's not a problem but am merely pointing out that progress is being made with regards to weighing containers.

[1] https://www.aitworldwide.com/what-is-vgm-or-verified-gross-m...

[2] https://www.bifa.org/news/articles/2016/sep/container-lines-...

[3] https://www.msc.com/fra/agency-news/2016-july/100-vgm-compli...

[4] https://www.bifa.org/news/articles/2020/jul/containers-lost-...

Seems like something shopping companies will want to solve.. if a row of containers on the ship has tilted I'm guessing it'll take a lot of extra work to safely unload the ship too.

Possible [Topic] Dupe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26987097

Shipping containers should be boyant, water tight and include a robotic system to propel them to the nearest landing point, like box shaped fish.

Not sure I'd like to be on board the ship that finds itself sailing through the area where 1800 box shaped fish are heading towards land.

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