Slashdot reports of a interesting article at Singularity Hub about how 10,000 shipping containers are lost at sea each year;
“Right now, as you read this, there are five or six million shipping containers on enormous cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. And about every hour, on average, one is falling overboard never to be seen again. It’s estimated that 10,000 of these large containers are lost at sea each year. This month the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent a robotic sub to investigate a shipping container that was lost in the Monterrey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2004. What’s happened to the sunken shipment in the past seven years? It’s become a warren for a variety of aquatic life on the ocean floor, providing a new habitat for species that might otherwise not be attracted to the area.”
From the comments at Slashdot it sounds as if cargo ships often purposely dump containers to help stabilize the boat and do so quite often. Further, according to commentators, the companies that ship their products from overseas are so large scale and ship in such large quantities that it’s to be expected to lose a few containers and don’t actively investigate. It doesn’t sound far fetched at all considering the size of these container ships and amount things get “lost” in transit anyways.
If we at Great Western Transportation were ever to lose your container on one of our Heavy Haul Trucking trailers we would never hear the end of it!
