Junk from Olympic coast cargo spill still washing ashore nearly 3 years later

Canadian officials say nearly all of the debris from 109 shipping containers that tumbled off a storm-tossed cargo ship off the Olympic Peninsula in October 2021 remains at sea.

Observers in Canada and Alaska say waterlogged debris from the Zim Kingston container spill keeps coming ashore.

“The loss of a container can take seconds, but years later, the damage remains,” said Canada Transportation Safety Board Chair Kathy Fox.

“We are still finding debris linked to the Zim Kingston spill all over the exposed beaches in B.C.,” Ben Boulton of the Rugged Coast Research Society, a nonprofit that tracks ocean debris in British Columbia, said by email.

“The freshness of the debris suggests the containers continue to lose their contents,” Fox said.

Boulton predicted that British Columbians would be dealing with Zim Kingston debris “for decades to come.”

RELATED: High-end coolers wash up on Alaska beaches after Washington cargo spill

In July 2023, Canadian researchers with a remotely operated vehicle found 29 sunken shipping containers and debris ranging from couches to plastic packaging near the container-spill location, about 40 miles west of Cape Flattery at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The Fisheries and Oceans Canada researchers reported finding 6,700 pairs of boots in the vicinity.

“There is still debris and coolers washing up but it is all pretty destroyed,” Alaska bush pilot and beachcomber Duke Marolf, who has collected dozens of Yeti-brand coolers from wilderness beaches on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, said in a text message.

In a new report, Transportation Safety Board investigators estimate that 1,640 tons of cargo and containers went overboard, with 97% of it remaining on the sea floor, suspended in the water column, or washed up on the wild coastlines of Canada and Alaska.

With debris accumulating on beaches from Washington to Alaska and a fire burning for five days on board the Zim Kingston before it limped into harbor, the maritime disaster had severe consequences. But safety board investigators say sheer luck kept things from getting worse.

“It is important not to mistake this luck for emergency preparedness,” Fox said. “The next time, we might not be as lucky.”

While the Canadian Coast Guard does not have firefighting capabilities, two Danish ships with powerful firefighting pumps happened to be docked nearby in Victoria.

In addition, the United States’ tighter safety requirements played a key role in fighting a fire in Canadian waters.

“United States legislation required that vessels transiting U.S. waters, like the Zim Kingston, have a pre-existing marine salvage and response contract in place in the event of a marine emergency,” Transportation Safety Board investigator Étienne Séguin-Bertrand said.

Thanks to a contract with U.S.-based Resolve Marine, the operators of the Zim Kingston were able to quickly mobilize a Resolve team from Port Angeles, Washington, to keep hazardous-materials fires from spreading from damaged containers to the rest of the ship.

Rolling, rolling, rolling

The Zim Kingston set out from Busan, South Korea, for the Port of Vancouver on Oct. 6, 2021. Piled high with 1,965 shipping containers, the ship was nearing the international border between Washington’s Olympic coast and Canada’s Vancouver Island when it encountered a major windstorm.

Instead of seeking shelter inside the relatively protected waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the captain tried to ride out the waves on the open Pacific while waiting for an anchorage or a berth in port to become available. He pointed his vessel into the wind, then let it drift backward in a sort of zigzag holding pattern.

RELATED: Ship that spilled 100+ containers could have ridden out the storm in sheltered waters

This strategy worked from early morning until evening, and the captain turned down an offer of a safe place to anchor just after 5 p.m., according to the Safety Board investigation. Seven hours later, as winds rose to 48 miles per hour and waves reached 16 to 20 feet, his ship tipped wildly.

For a minute and a half, it tilted repeatedly to both port and starboard as much as 36 degrees.

“The weather conditions were not extreme for a vessel of that size and design,” Séguin-Bertrand said.

Safety board investigators said the Zim Kingston suffered a violent rocking motion known as parametric rolling.

They were able to recreate the extreme rolling with a scale model of the Zim Kingston.

Parametric rolling can occur when a series of waves hit a ship at just the right angle and frequency. It is a well-known threat in the shipping industry.

VIDEO: Canada's National Research Council used a scale model of the Zim Kingston to recreate the "parametric rolling" that repeatedly tipped the ship 36 degrees, to both port and starboard, causing containers to snap their lashings and fall into the sea.

Even before the 5 p.m. invitation to an anchorage, the Zim Kingston’s captain had the option to enter more sheltered waters.

As KUOW reported in 2021, up to a dozen big ships were doing laps at the time on a 25-mile-long “racetrack” in the relatively sheltered Strait of Juan de Fuca to avoid the worst of the storm.

The safety board report notes that at least five cargo vessels were operating in offshore holding patterns similar to the Zim Kingston, while only the Zim Kingston lost containers.

“At the time, the decision to drift was not outside of normal practice for the industry,” Séguin-Bertrand said.

The safety board found that Danaos, the Greek shipping company that runs the Zim Kingston, had not properly alerted its captain and crew how to avoid parametric rolling in high seas.

It also found that the Zim Kingston was routinely overloaded, though the board concluded that overloading did not cause the container spill. Even a properly loaded ship would likely have snapped its lashings and lost containers given the severity of the rolling, investigators calculated.

Safety board officials declined to identify the captain of the Zim Kingston. According to the investigation, the captain had worked for Danaos since 2004 and as a captain since 2019.

Danaos representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

To prevent so much junk from winding up in the ocean, Canada's House of Commons in 2022 recommended putting tracking locators on all shipping containers, banning foam plastic packaging on ships, and other new policies.

Transport Canada has been working to toughen its safety standards for cargo ships carrying hazardous materials, but those changes aren’t expected to take effect for another three years.

The World Shipping Council estimates that the global shipping industry loses about 1,600 containers at sea each year.