Is your marine insurance up to date?

From SCDigest's On-Target e-Magazine A freak discovery of an ocean shipping container has led to a study on how the thousands per year that fall off cargo vessels might be impacting the oceanic ecosystem. According to DeVogelaere, several years ago scientists from the sanctuary were in a boat using a robotic submarine when they made a surprising find: a yellow, 40-foot shipping container, standing upside down with one corner stuck into the ocean floor.

The scientists marked the location and other information, and eventually they were able to tie the container to the merchant vessel Med Taipei, which had earlier lost 15 containers in a storm off Monterey Bay.

It turns out there are a lot more than 15 shipping containers in the briny deep - tens of thousands of them actually.

DeVogelaere told PBS that on average, about 10,000 containers fall off of ships every year. While that number may be high, the general consensus is several thousand containers are lost to the sea each year, adding up to tens of thousands over the decades. Naturally, they cluster around the paths taken on the key shipping lanes, and contain an incredibly wide range of goods, from benign to potentially toxic. The shipping container the sanctuary found was full of tires, as it turned out.

As we've known for centuries with regard to sunken ships, the containers are also not surprisingly an attraction for much marine life. The container the sanctuary first identified is now the home of a giant sea snail, which has recently laid eggs. Beneath the container was found an octopus and some crabs that have eaten some but not all of the sea snail eggs.

NPR's Joyce noted that "These containers are creating a new kind of habitat, with its own suite of creatures, in the middle of the seabed. Is that bad? Well, DeVogelaere says no one can say - the seabed is still a big mystery."

The containers might also "provide stepping stones for an invasive species that go from one coastal harbor to another," DeVogelaere.

Who knows what your lost containers are doing down at the bottom of the sea. Maybe we will soon find out.  Just make sure your marine insurance is up to date!