Tales of Lost Shipping Containers and Their Plastic Treasure

You may have heard that 80% of the plastic which ends up in the ocean comes from land and this is often what we focus on as we seek to ban plastic coffee cups, water bottles and bags. Yet have you considered the 20% of pollution which originates from the sea? Often plastic which both starts and ends in the ocean is out of sight out of mind in our daily lives but oil rigs, fishing boats, military vessels, container ships, recreational crafts and aquaculture facilities all act as a potential route for this escapee to enter our seas.

In 1982, the year the Falklands War started, whaling was banned and Michael Jackson released Thriller, ships were estimated to dump 639,000 plastic containers daily worldwide. That’s 233 million per year! In fact, only recently has the dumping of waste at sea fallen out of fashion. The MARPOL Convention was created to stop all types of pollution being released from ships, be it oil, sewage or even air pollution. Surprisingly though, the strand of the agreement which tackles plastic pollution, arguably one of the most pervasive types of pollution modern society faces, is completely optional for all countries! Luckily, 150 countries have agreed to adhere to the guidelines set by the convention which represents 98% of global shipping tonnage. Yet for several reasons, this has failed to reduce the amount of plastic we find lapping at shorelines and cresting the waves. Most significantly, this is due to the difficultly in patrolling the vast extent of our oceans; in fact, this remains pretty much impossible. However, another significant source of ocean plastic which remains largely unregulated is shipping containers, which coincidentally also provide some of the most intriguing stories.

As you are reading this from your home, your office desk or the train, between five and six million shipping containers are slowly traversing their way across our blue planet. Altogether, they transport roughly 90% of all the goods we buy, from cars to food to kids toys and pretty much all of these are wrapped in plastic packaging. Somewhere between the ferocious storms and hidden reefs which greet sailors, 10,000 containers, or one per hour, topple off ships and plunge into the ocean each year where the waves become the unintended owner of our plethora of plastic goodies. Here the law once again seems to be lacking as captains are free to sail away without a second glance to their lost cargo; the only exceptions occur if the container is posing a navigational hazard in a busy shipping route or if it lands in a designated marine sanctuary. Once alone in the water, containers lurk just below the surface until they take on enough water to sink to the seabed. Nestling on the sand, the pressure of the water eventually cracks open the metal sides and our goods erupt into the ocean in a sort of man-made undersea volcano.

The impacts of this explosion on our marine wildlife are devastating, from entanglement to ingestion of microplastic. Frustratingly it seems we can do very little about it except clean up the mess that finally washes ashore. Yet this simple act has created some extraordinary stories.

In 1997, Cornwall, England was at the hands of two large container spills. Firstly, Tokio Express lost over five million pieces of Lego to the waves; ironically, the Lego was mostly made of ocean-themed sets leaving octopuses, pirates and scuba divers littering the sand. Over 20 years later, many of these pieces can still be found on Cornish and Devon shores with locals racing to find the rarest sea faring pieces. Yet the rest of the ocean-bound set could have travelled up to 62,000 miles by now.

One month later, MV Cita hit one of the many rocky outcrops around the Isles of Scilly, leaving the locals carting designer clothes, computer mice, car tyres and baby items off their hidden beaches by any means possible, whether that be cars, boats, prams or wheelbarrows. The whole scene was reminiscent of the Scillies in the 16th Century when it was known as a pirate haven, fraught with smuggling and devious activities from local anarchists. However, today, the wrecked goods were not stolen as no law lays out who the contents belong to and the recovered goods were not drunk or sold but washed, dried and packed off to multiple charities. While they might not have been the intended consumer, at least some good arose from the disaster with both local wildlife and charities benefitting from the locals’ good natured clean up. One container on MV Cita however contained a much worse load than plastic technological goods. Instead it contained a roll of polyethylene film which extended 1,500 miles. That’s longer than the American coastline stretching from Canada to Mexico.

More recently, on New Year’s Day this year, 270 containers were lost from an ultra-large container ship in the Wadden Sea between the Netherlands and Germany, spilling toys, white goods, flat screen TVs and toxic peroxide on UNESCO World Heritage beaches. Yet a combination of technology and community spirit saw 220 containers quickly found using sonar devices while volunteers, fishermen and local military took part in the clean up efforts to remove as many offenders as possible before the waves swept them away for good.

So while the overall impact remains negative, we can take positives from these unforeseen events. Whilst diving around a lost container in Monterey Bay, divers saw that local organisms had used the solid structure as the base for a new home, with twisted coral branches weaving their way across its surface. These events are also being used by scientists themselves to learn more about ocean currents as they follow lost rubber ducks on their circumnavigation of our planet, something which will allow us to predict the flows of ocean plastic in the future and better target our action. Companies are even beginning to take note with Chinese organisation Sinopec spending a substantial amount on recovering lost bags of nurdles to avoid the bad press which now rises as we become more understanding of plastic’s perils. While they may not have done it for the right reason, I’m sure our fish, turtles, sharks and whales are equally as happy either way. If you want to make a difference, you could be one of the tireless community members who carts away unused goods off our precious beaches when a disaster does occur locally to you. While this issue is hard for us to directly prevent, we can make a small difference if we choose to buy fewer products and make sure the ones we do buy are local to reduce their air or ocean miles and spill potential. As technology improves we can also hope that more will be done to recover lost containers as digital IDs and GPS tracking devices are increasing year by year.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood