Last week’s On Watch column on the recent report from the World Shipping Organziation on the number of containers lost at sea during the year, noted that some 1478 containers went over the side. This is up markedly fron 2025, large because one ship lost 649 containers in one incident.
Our old friend Seibe Nordze of Newport, RI, runs the marine gear and equipment dealership Euro Marine Trading in Newport, RI. In his previous career, he was in the marine shipping business and has run and managed many container ships.
Here are his insights into the real hazards provided by containers lost at sea.
You may know that in my “former life” I worked in the shipping industry, this included running container vessels across the North Atlantic and between New York, Miami and most of the islands in the Caribbean. I was VP operations for the latter company.
With interest I read the article about “Shipping Containers Are Hazards at Sea”, to make sure that we all understand the numbers that are published correctly I wish to add my two pennies to the article……
It is estimated that 1478 containers fell off ships in 2025, 128 of them were recovered, that suggests that 1350 containers could form a possible hazard to smaller vessels, in particular leisure craft. What not has been taken into account is that containers are not airtight, meaning that they will not float. Only a small percentage may float which is directly related to the cargo inside the container, e.g. a container loaded with steel bars will sink almost immediately to the bottom of the ocean. On the other side of the spectrum, a container loaded with pin-pong balls……… (think you got the idea). For some containers it may take some time to sink because the cargo may take time to fully absorb the water, but will eventually sink too (except the container with the ping-pong balls).
Also, the article is reporting the number of “containers”, the container industry does not measure in number of containers, the industry standard is in TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) which is a container of twenty feet long (= one TEU) . The larger container vessels crossing the oceans nowadays can carry the equivalent of 20,000 (+) TEU’s. I estimate that at least 80% of containers aboard a vessel are 40 feet long (=2 TEU), meaning that these vessels carry effectively some 10-12.000 containers.
Some more, additional information…..estimated number of containers (20′ and 40′) in active circulation; 65
million; estimated number of containers (20′ and 40′) moved across waterways annually; 250 to 300 million. The number of containers lost overboard form thus a very small percentage of these numbers.
In any case, and I am not suggesting that “lost overboard” containers do not form a hazard, I just wanted to add some information to make sure that the numbers are correctly interpreted and not suggest that the oceans are “full of floating containers”, as has been suggested in other publications.
