from the bottom of the ocean

"There is no requirement on shipping lines to report container losses to the International Maritime Organization or other international body, so no one seems to know how many containers are lost at sea every year. In 2011, the World Shipping Council estimated that including “catastrophic losses” such as the capsizing of a vessel, about 675 containers were lost at sea annually.


The Through Transport Club, which insures 15 of the top 20 container lines, has put the loss at fewer than 2,000 containers a year. But other industry sources say the number may be as high as 10,000. That would still represent far less than 1% of the containers traversing the world’s oceans. Maersk, one of the world’s largest lines, says that its highest annual loss in the last decade was 59 containers.


But the hazard is still real enough. In recent years, several small vessels have reported damage after hitting semi-submerged containers. During his solo voyage around the world, American sailor Paul Lutus wrote that “one night in the Indian Ocean, I hit a waterlogged shipping container that was too low in the water to show up on radar.”