Many Containers Lost In North Pacific

A Maersk-chartered ship lost an unspecified number of containers during stormy conditions on a Pacific voyage to the US on Monday.

Incident

Many lost containers, found in the North Pacific, SE of Kamchatka on Mar 20. Later it has become known, that containers lost by the containership DYROS, while en route from Yantian China to Seattle. The ship continued her voyage, at 1400 UTC was sailing south of Unalaska Island, Alaska.

The 4,506TEU vessel, under Costamare ownership, ran into difficulties to the south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. It has since continued on its voyage as planned to Seattle where it is due to arrive on Sunday.

“The full extent of the loss of cargo overboard and of any accompanying physical damage to containers remaining onboard the vessel may not become clear until the vessel arrives at Seattle.”
WK Webster, Claims consultant

As a result, WK Webster has made arrangements to meet the vessel, which was previously chartered to Cosco. Hence, confirm the “extent of losses” once it has arrived in Seattle. The ship is due to dock in Seattle on 27 March.

Furthermore, the consultant expects that there will be recovery issues as a result of this accident.

Maersk has said it will update on the accident tomorrow, while Costamare has not responded to requests for information.

The North Pacific has been the scene of many box spills over the past couple of years resulting in insurance claims to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

A report, released in 2020, showed that in the most recent period between 2017 and 2019, an average of 779 shipping containers lost at sea annually.

Since containers are being stacked high, the ships are becoming even more top-heavy, meaning that in bad weather they are likely to be shuffled and jolted around, making it inevitable that they will fall off their vessels.