Insights from Associated Press report on lost shipping containers

LONG BEACH, Wash. – From clothing to metals used in production, most everyday goods and raw materials transported long distances are packed in large metal boxes the size of semi-trucks and stacked on ships. Millions of containers cross the oceans every year. Not everything reaches its destination.

The Associated Press investigated what is happening to the thousands of shipping containers that fall from ships and are lost at sea.

Sometimes hundreds of shipping containers are lost at once during storms or accidents. Sometimes just a few containers fall overboard.

The fact that ships have become larger in recent years has contributed to the problem.

“On the modern big ships, it’s like a skyscraper,” said Jos Koning, senior project manager at MARIN, a Netherlands-based maritime research organization that studies shipping risks.

Today's largest cargo ships are longer than three football fields. Containers are lifted using cranes and stacked in towering columns. When the industry took off about 50 years ago, ships could only carry about a tenth of the cargo that today's huge ships carry.

Larger size carries higher risks. The largest ships are more difficult to maneuver and are more likely to roll in high waves. There is a greater risk of a single box being damaged and crushed. Such accidents can result in a stack of containers falling into the sea.

Accidents often result from cargo that was incorrectly labeled, weighed or stored.

However, cargo ship operators do not have the capacity to verify all container weights and contents and must rely on information provided by shippers.

In a pilot study, the National Cargo Bureau, a nonprofit organization that works with the U.S. Coast Guard to inspect ocean cargo, found that widespread mislabeling and improper stowage resulted in nearly 70% of shipping containers arriving in the U.S. containing hazardous cargo Goods that do not meet the safety requirements of the Office are inspected.

“Despite all these problems, most of the time it arrives safely,” said Ian Lennard, president of the National Cargo Bureau.

There is no clear answer.

At least 20,000 shipping containers have fallen overboard in the last decade and a half, according to a trade group. However, tracking efforts are fragmented and incomplete. Some shipping accidents and disasters make headlines, such as the cargo ship accident on a bridge in Baltimore in March. However, much less is known about how often containers are lost piecemeal or outside major ports.

The most commonly cited figures on lost shipping containers come from the World Shipping Council. Members of the group, which handles about 90% of the world's container traffic, self-report their losses in a survey every year.

Over 16 years of data collected through 2023, the group said an average of 1,480 containers were lost annually – but fewer in recent years. According to their latest figures, 650 containers were lost in 2022, compared to only around 200 last year.

But spills involving non-council shippers are not included in the balance sheet. For example, the 2023 total did not include 1,300 containers that sank with the cargo ship Angel near a Taiwanese port.

Marine biologist Andrew DeVogelaere of California's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary has spent 15 years studying the environmental impact of a single container found in the sanctuary's waters.

“We leave time capsules on the ocean floor with everything we buy and sell – and may remain there for hundreds of years,” he said.

“The first thing that happens is they land and crush everything underneath them,” DeVogelaere said.

Debris that washed ashore in Long Beach, Washington, matched that lost from the giant cargo ship ONE Apus in November 2020. When the ship encountered heavy waves on its journey from China to California, almost 2,000 containers slipped into the Pacific.

Court documents and industry reports show the ship was carrying more than $100,000 worth of bicycle helmets and thousands of boxes of Crocs, as well as electronics and other more dangerous goods: batteries, ethanol and 54 containers of fireworks.

Researchers mapped the debris flow on Pacific coasts thousands of miles apart, including in Washington state and the remote Midway Atoll, a national wildlife refuge for millions of seabirds near the Hawaiian Islands.

In Sri Lanka, the fallout is still ongoing, three years after a major fire aboard the X-Press Pearl sank the container ship a few miles off the coast.

More than 1,400 damaged shipping containers were thrown into the sea in the disaster. It released billions of pellets from plastic production, known as nurdles, as well as thousands of tons of nitric acid, lead, methanol and sodium hydroxide, all of which are toxic to marine life.

Hemantha Withanage remembers how the beach near his home smelled like burning chemicals. Volunteers soon collected thousands of dead fish whose gills were filled with chemical-laced plastic, and nearly 400 dead endangered sea turtles, more than 40 dolphins and six whales whose mouths were stuffed with plastic. “It was like a war zone,” he said.

Cleanup crews in full-body protective suits trudged into the flood with hand sifters to try to collect the lens-sized plastic pellets.

The waterfront was closed to commercial fishing for three months, and the 12,000 families whose income depends on fishing have received only a fraction of the $72 million they were entitled to from Withanage, founder of the nonprofit Center for Environmental Justice in Sri Lanka .

There are still effects. This year's summer winds have washed thousands of plastic pellets ashore.

Lloyd's List Intelligence, a maritime intelligence firm that has tracked thousands of maritime accidents on container ships over the past decade, told the AP that underreporting was widespread. Transportation insurers, who typically have to pay for breakdowns, likely have access to more comprehensive claims data – but there is no law requiring the collection and public sharing of data.

Joe Kramek, president of the World Shipping Council, said the industry is researching ways to reduce errors when loading and stacking containers and navigating ships through turbulent waters

Earlier this year, the United Nations International Maritime Organization approved changes to two global ocean treaties aimed at increasing transparency around lost shipping containers. These changes, expected to come into force in 2026, will require ships to report losses to nearby coastal countries and to the authorities with which the ship is registered. However, since there are no enforceable penalties, it remains to be seen to what extent operators will comply.

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Larson and Wieffering reported from Washington, D.C. Bharatha Mallawarachi contributed reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation and the Science and Educational Media Group of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Contact AP's global investigative team at [email protected] or