France orders Maersk to find 500 lost containers

France has given Maersk Line until the end of the summer to pinpoint the location of around 500 containers which tumbled overboard from the Svendborg Maersk in internaional waters off the Atlantic coast in February this year. 

None of the crew was injured during the incident and damage to the ship was minor. 

A total of 517 boxes fell into the sea during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. 13 of them, floating on the surface, were recovered by French support vessels in the weeks following the incident. Maersk is said to have been billed €250,000 for the costs incurred. 

However, given the scale of the losses, the French authorites have ordered Maersk to draw up a detailed map indicating the exact location of the containers which sank. This will involve the chartering of a ship capable of carrying out a sonar survey of the ocean floor. 

"It’s perhaps an exceptional request on our part but one which follows an exceptional maritime shipping incident," a spokesman for France’s State Office for Martime Affairs, in Brest, in Brittany, explained in a telephone interview. "However, Maersk has been only too ready to meet the request," the spokesman 
underlined. 

"The aim of the survey is to produce cartographic data which will help fishermen avoid zones where containers lie and prevent the entanglement of nets." 

Maersk Line’s senior press officer, Michael Christian Storgaard, told Lloyd’s Loading List.com that scanning would commence once the survey vessel was available. 

"We have had a constructive dialogue and understanding with local authorities in both France and UK and we remain committed to doing our part to best mitigate the consequences of the Svendborg Maersk incident." 

However, he gave no indication of the duration of the search operation nor the likely financial outlay required to carry it out. 

Over 80% of the boxes lost were empties and the remainder contained dry, non-hazardous goods, including cigarettes, many of which were found washed-up along the coastline of south-west England.