Veteran cruisers will tell you that the things they fear most at sea are ships and the containers that fall off them.
On June 25, the World Shipping Council issued their annual report on the number of containers that were lost at sea in 2025. They estimated that 1,478 containers fell off ships and of those 128 were later recovered.
Both figures are record numbers. The Council has been collecting data on containers lost since 2011 and estimate the average lost every year at around 600. So, the 2025 tally is huge increase and statistically an outlier. And, the 128 recovered is the most since that record keeping began in 2023.
One significant factor in the huge increase in lost units is the single incident that saw 640 go over the side from one ship. That loss represented 43% of the total. Only a total of 574 containers were lost in all of 2024.
It is worth noting that the 2025 total represents a tiny fraction of the 280 million units that were shipped at sea globally last year.
That said, shipping containers are a real hazard to cruising mariners at sea since they tend to float just at or below the surface where they are difficult if not impossible to see in daylight and are invisible at night.
Running into a container in a fiberglass boat, power or sail, can create significant hull damage and even the loss of the yacht. Most of our cruising boats do not have separate watertight compartments in the bow and most do not have emergency pumps with enough capacity to stop flooding from a serious hull breach.
To get a better handle on the number and locations of lost containers, new regulations went into effect on January 1, 2026 that mandate shipping companies and the flag nations where ships are registered to report all lost units and provide the specific locations.
This new information will be overseen by the international Convention for Safety of Life at Sea and the International Maritime Organization. With this new protocol in place, mariners, both recreational and commercial, will eventually have access to a database of lost containers which will improve both safety and recoveries.
The World Shipping Council is an international organization supported by its member, most of whom are well known shipping lines like Maersk, Matson and many others.
(Image above courtesy of the World Shipping Council.)
