The Cornish beaches where Lego keeps washing up

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28367198

by martokus • 12 years ago

190 56 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

DanBC4• 12 years ago

No-one knows exactly what happened next, or even what was in the other 61 containers,

WHAT?

I imagined every container to have tracking and identification numbers so the owners could know roughly where it is at all times; and so that various government agencies could prevent import of things not allowed in their countries. A quote a bit later on kind of supports that.

She says the ship's manifest - a detailed list of everything in the containers - shows a whole range of Lego items, not all sea-themed. After all this time "it's the same old things that keep coming in with the tide", particularly after a bad storm.

I'm surprised about how many containers are lost.

About 120m containers carried on world's oceans in 2013
2011 survey by World Shipping Council estimated an average of 675 containers lost at sea each year between 2008-10
2014 survey says average annual loss between 2011-13 was approximately 2,683 containers

2,500 containers out of 120m is a small number, but still. How would you design a pinger suitable for shipping containers so that they could be located after being dropped overboard?

EDIT I should have said that this pinger thing is just a thought experiment. Obviously most containers are no lost, and most of the ones that are are not toxic / valuable enough to bother with. (But thanks to the posters below)

jedc2• 12 years ago

When I was in the Navy, I knew a guy who had moved half-way around the world between postings. Virtually all of his "household goods" were in a container... that was lost overboard in a storm.

It had happened to him years before I knew him, and he was still having to deal with the paperwork. :(

dredmorbius3• 12 years ago

And "household goods" is in quotes because?

tragic2• 12 years ago

No pinger will save lost cargo around Cornwall - they've been assiduous scavengers down there for centuries...

But I guess it's just cheaper for all concerned to write off the lost goods and file an insurance claim. As they say: worse things happen at sea.

ra2• 12 years ago

Do you know what a social stigma is?

Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_stigma

nodata• 12 years ago

Located for what? It'd cost too much money to retrieve.

Kluny2• 12 years ago

I think the company in custody of the goods should be held responsible for environmental damage they cause, up to and including retrieving containers they lose.

jarek• 12 years ago

Much of the real world is low-tech and works just fine under 80/20 rule (usually 99/1 or higher). Try asking any store manager for detailed data on shrinkage.

But as we're on the subject on containers, here's an interesting read from Wired on a radioactive container in Genoa port a couple of years ago: http://www.wired.com/2011/10/ff_radioactivecargo/all/1

raverbashing• 12 years ago

"How would you design a pinger suitable for shipping containers so that they could be located after being dropped overboard?"

You don't. Black box pingers have a range of approximately 5k meters. Which complicates matters if your depth is in that range.

And for what purpose you'd want that again? Claim the insurance.

pjc50• 12 years ago

pinger suitable for shipping containers

Locating things underwater is a tremendous pain because it's radio-opaque. So you have to spend a lot of energy on sonar.

Having a power source for such a thing is a tremendous pain: you want a lot of capacity and low self-discharge. Ideally the battery would be chemically or mechanically inactive until underwater. Compare for example the wet cells in the early radar anti-aircraft shells that were inert until fired out of a cannon. Doable, but it's not going to be cheap.

Also, it's going to be expensive to fish up the container, and the contents will generally be destroyed and worthless. Realistically this is only going to be worth it for (a) things too toxic to leave lying around or (b) gold.

zenojevski• 12 years ago

I think it should ping when it's dropping, before it sinks, kind of like a Macbook does with mechanical hard drives.

Then sonaring it should be simpler, as we know the rough location.

algorias• 12 years ago

I imagined every container to have tracking and identification numbers so the owners could know roughly where it is at all times; and so that various government agencies could prevent import of things not allowed in their countries.

Yes, that's correct. Every container has a unique ID, and the content of each one is declared in the shipping manifest, of which the port authority, customs, the shipping company, the agricultural service etc etc, have copies. Not knowing what was in the containers is complete bullshit, everyone know at least what was declared to be in them.

Customs checks the truthfulness of the manifest by opening a small percentage of containers at random. Most containers just go through their voyage unopened. This and their standardised size is why container shipping was such a huge efficiency revolution in international transport.

Source: I worked in the industry for 6 years.

grecy2• 12 years ago

I'm surprised about how many containers are lost.

When I drove Alaska->Argentina, I had to ship my Jeep in a container from Panama to Colombia. I shared the container with a French couple driving around the entire world. He worked for a company that sent ~500 containers a month around the world for various construction projects.

We toyed with the idea of insurance on our container, and he said in his experience, about 10% of shipping containers are never seen again. They can disappear at the origin port, disappear on the ship, or disappear at the destination port.

Shipping ports are seedy places, in my experience.

We didn't get insurance, and our container did arrive no problems.

colinramsay• 12 years ago

This happened with MSC Napoli in 2007 - there were stories of people scavenging motorbikes from containers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSC_Napoli

And earlier this year too - cigarettes this time:

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fpfalmouth/11031368.Cor...

I'm lucky enough to live in Cornwall and I'd never heard of the lego thing, very interesting!

BgSpnnrs• 12 years ago

I remember the Napoli too, went and had a look out of curiosity. Also not heard of this Lego incident! Of course shipwrecks, and even wreckers have an illustrious history down here.

timthorn• 12 years ago

I've visited Branscombe every year of my life - we've a family connection. It used to be a fairly quiet but known seaside location, but ever since Napoli it has been much busier. I assume it's all those people who went and had a look and decided it was a pretty place to visit...

onehp• 12 years ago

One of the bands from the area wrote a song about the incident. It's not bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkUNkVEt9Y4

ck2• 12 years ago

I thought lego was little rectangular bricks?

xerophtye• 12 years ago

well yes, but they pieces aren't just bricks now. They have all sorts of special shape pieces, not to mention the Lego character accessories like flippers, swords, mugs etc etc.

swah• 12 years ago

But they still would mostly have the "universal snapping mount"?[1] I also had the feeling this wasn't legos, since that mount doens't appear.

(Ok, maybe not swords which go in minifigures hands.)

DanBC4• 12 years ago

When I played with it Lego was, mostly, little rectangular bricks. There were some minifigs, there were some trees. There were probably a lot of other non-rectangular bricks available but we didn't have them.

Now Lego has a huge range of non-rectangular bricks.

You can still buy basic bricks. Here are two links:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-6177-Basic-Bricks-Deluxe/dp/B00...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-5529-Basic-Bricks-More/dp/B004F...

dasil0033• 12 years ago

side note: is the title correct grammar? As someone who grew up with "Legos" plural and subsequently had the correct "Lego" plural beat into me by the Internet, now this curveball.

Don't Lego "keep" washing up? Why would Lego "keeps" washing up? Is it an amorphous blob like an oil spill? Seems to me more like fish.

DougBTX• 12 years ago

Is it an amorphous blob like an oil spill?

That's certainly how it works in the Lego Movie!

The title sounds fine to me. I would say "a Lego block" rather than "a Lego" too, similar to how I wouldn't say, "an oil". So calling it an "amorphous blob" sounds about right.

gjm11• 12 years ago

Usage seems to vary, but for me:

"Lego" (no preceding article) is a mass-noun for the stuff. It's not really an amorphous blob, of course, but it's being thought of that way. Like "sand" even though sand is made up of grains. "Sand keeps turning up in my shoes after that trip to the beach." "Lego keeps washing up on the shore after that container ship sank."

I call the individual bits "Lego pieces" or "Lego bricks" or "Lego blocks" or whatever.

Some people call them "Legos", whose singular would be "a Lego" or something of the kind. In that case it would be "Legos keep washing up".

I have never seen "Lego" used as an actual plural count-noun: "There are thousands of Lego in that box". Either "thousands of Lego pieces" or "thousands of Legos".

(I confess that using "Lego" as a count-noun makes my inner pedant twitch. But language is defined by usage, and it may well be that by now it's correct.)

prawn• 12 years ago

Lego has a guide somewhere instructing in the avoidance of "Legos" and any phrasing that makes "Lego" overly awkward in a plural situation. On my phone so hard to find the link right now.

kbutler• 12 years ago

It's likely a trademark issue. A trademark is suppose to be an adjective (a Google search. A Lego brick.)

This is because a trademark identifies a specific source or producer of an item. If a trademark is used as a noun (Kleenexes, Trampolines) it is a step toward generic usage and loss of the trademark.

Hence, the Lego group would want you to talk about Lego bricks and Lego pieces, but everyone else is fine talking about Legos. (Except my autocorrect, which wants it to be Lego's)

DanBC4• 12 years ago

Lego is an uncountable noun.

A not great example is "sugar keeps washing up".

dasil0033• 12 years ago

uncountable. That's the word I was looking for. How are Lego uncountable? It says the number of blocks right on the box!

tonyblundell• 12 years ago

UK English. We say Lego or Lego bricks, rather than Legos.

Same way we'd use sand & grains of sand as plurals.

dredmorbius3• 12 years ago

It's been "Legos" for the past 40 years for me. Stuff trademarks.

jonah• 12 years ago

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them[1] by Donovan Hohn is a great book about a container of toys lost in the Pacific in 1992 and their subsequent travels around the world.

Oceanographers have since learned about currents from tracing them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Duck

ToastyMallows• 12 years ago

Amazon link for the lazy:

http://smile.amazon.com/Moby-Duck-Beachcombers-Oceanographer...

mdda• 12 years ago

This was a surprisingly relevant story for me - I'm just decompressing after a "Marine Hackathon" held over the weekend in Singapore [1]. It was an all-too-brief glimpse into the vast container transshipment business, and the operations of the enormous port here : The quantities of goods that flow through the port is amazing [2]. i.e. more than 1 20 foot container per second 24/7/365.

[1] http://www.upsingapore.com/smart-port-hackathon/ [2] : http://www.seatrade-global.com/news/asia/singapore-port-hand...

sailfast2• 12 years ago

Was I the only one that thought it was appropriate to place a photo containing a number of Lego life vests at the top of the article?

As a side note: Though a small fraction of the total transported, 675 containers a year floating around the ocean scares the bejesus out of me as an offshore sailor. The fact that many are partially submerged and flow with currents that are unpredictable makes the idea of crossing the channel quite harrowing for anybody without a steel hull.

spiznnx• 12 years ago

The containers are dangerous. You should watch the film "All is Lost", it's about that exact scenario where it shipwrecks a solo sailing ship.

http://imdb.com/title/tt2017038/

sailfast2• 12 years ago

Yup - saw that one in the theaters. Unfortunately for anyone that has sailed before, Redford makes a bunch of incredibly stupid decisions-as-plot-devices. Here's an article that helps put the problem in perspective: http://www.oceannavigator.com/March-April-2013/A-legendary-o...

zabaki• 12 years ago

More people should see this as an alternative way of providing a solution.

http://vimeo.com/58461689

Houshalter• 12 years ago

I have seen plastic degrade significantly when left outside for just a year or so. How long will Legos last floating in the ocean? At least in a usable or recognizable form. Some of those pieces look pristine. And do animals eat them?

kepano• 12 years ago

It depends on the type of plastic. Legos are made of ABS which is one of the most durable plastics, especially when it comes to outdoor conditions.

francis88• 12 years ago

It very much reminds me of Glass Beach, near Fort Bragg California...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_Califo...

ed_blackburn• 12 years ago

Kernow bys verkeyn!

(Sorry I couldn't resist it. I never thought I'd see a story on here about my home.)

I've never heard to Lego story either, plenty of other things get washed up, but I've never seen or heard of Lego.

oneweirdtrick• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the Hansa Carrier incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa_Carrier

The idea that a ton of lost sneakers helped to illustrate ocean currents blew my mind as a kid.

josefresco• 12 years ago

Reminds me of when I was a kid on the coast of Maine. Rowed out to a small island and found scattered amongst the rocks over a large area hundreds of GI-Joe parts. Mostly just parts/broken pieces, as if someone put an entire collection inside a box and blew it up. Still to this day have no idea how or why those were there.

logfromblammo• 12 years ago

If you thought all the rocks, seashell fragments, and hot sand made walking barefoot on the beach difficult before...

Certain ocean currents make some beaches more likely to accumulate interesting detritus than others, including Asian tsunami debris, lost shipping, and the occasional lonely shoe or boot with human foot remains still inside. That last one happens more often than you might think.

The Cornish beaches where Lego keeps washing up

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