Reminds me when that ship ran aground in The Simpsons and all the hot pants floated to shore... ; )

Great photo of the vessel from aft. It always looked as if piling these containers sky hih was going to be a problem (in addition to the leaking oil that is).

Love all the 'experts' commenting about oil and how the ship is overloaded.

"Better to remain silent and thought a fool, then to speak and remove all doubt."

Amazing photos!

One wonders what is in those containers. Blu-Rays? Leather jackets? Shoes? I used to work for an import company, and I remember seeing a scene in some Hollywood disaster movie once where a cargo ship was hit by a wave and all the containers were knocked into the sea. I remember thinking, "NOOOoooooooo!!!" When you're waiting on a just-in-time delivery in order to send out merchandise to your clients, you can't afford for your stuff to fall into the ocean, even with insurance.

I hope they are able to save the ship, for environmental reasons.

Britain has a sea salvage law that says basically "if it washes up on your shore and you can get it out of the water, it's yours." Are Kiwis flocking to the scene to drag cargo containers out of the surf, or is the cargo not worth that much? Maybe get the containers ashore and fill them with the oil that is scraped up off the beaches. It's a disaster no matter how you look at it.

this ship appears to be over loaded but it my not be from my point of veiw Iuse to work at a containter port in the Bahamas most of the empty containters are stowed above deck and full ones below, that is why some of them was able to float to shore. The main propblem here is that this ship loss power or encounter really bad weather it ran aground, now what some needs to do is to design a system where huge ships can expell its oil and hazzadious fuels to some sort of containment rubber or inflatable plastic material that is carried onboard these ships, but then again this is where expences come in to design such a system and ships installing them.we must also understand these type accidance are few and far between

As the container ship approached dangerous reef flats, the drunken ship Captain was starting a new family with the female kitchen Chef and he locked himself out of the ships Bridge and the door key was in his pants pocket in the starlets cabin.....Just Saying!

RIP.illegal Chinese immigrants hidden in the containers.

Another large loss for WalMart.

These container are mostly 40 footers, which usually cary lighter items like shoes, packaged electronics and other retail products - probably some pretty pricey items. 48,000 lbs is the max they can carry. Heavy stuff like machinery and agricultural products are usually put in 20 foot containers. The containers can float for a while because they have well sealed doors. Any of them with air vents are probably going to sink, eventually.

Unfortunately minor spills are viewed worldwide as acceptable losses. Hell, the BP disaster in the gulf is largely viewed as an acceptable loss.

No one cares ! ....................... if they did this sort of thing would never happen.

The Liberian-flagged Rena

These companies circumvent our strick safety and labor standard that trequire any ship register here in the USA must hire US CITIZENS. So they avoid the USA and register these ships all over the world. This is what happens.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/06/11/304620/

Freedom, so you actually made a computer? One of thos kits you could buy in the 70's. By the way, how do you think those metal parts came into existance? Chipmunks? No, OIL. They have to mine the ore, transport the ore, smelt the ore, make sheet metal, cut the sheet metal, transport the sheet metal, make the housing, transport the housing to you local electronics store, you drive to the store and buy the housing, drive home with the part and assemble. Learn about full cycle anything before you think you should tell everyone else how smart you think you are.

This is so sad for the people of New Zealand who work hard to protect their environment. NZ is a very small country and they take good care of their environment. This is devastating.

The container markings show a shipper that mainly deals in raw rubber and palm oil/coconut.. This would make sense as this route is common in this trade.. Most if not all of that should be salvageable but the other stuff like electronics and rice might end up on ebay and in some farm/food poor country.. The shippers have salvage ships that will pick this thing clean in a few weeks just like they do with a truck wreck on the highway.. Once unloaded they will tow it to a breaking facility and scrap it there..

Run agoround you say. looking at the photos a 12 foot duck boat could not have avoided running aground. Where was the captain/Pilot? And for you people that are so green, cradle to grave your green prius leaves a bigger carbon footprint than a Hummer.

Re: sinking ship. Good analogy. Someone needs to put a patch over the crack and find a way to weld the two ends back together. Then there will be time to lift the ship off the reef. However, I think the crack is getting wider, the two ends are getting father apart..... and the ship is about to sink. In that case, the officers onboard will abandon ship via corporate helicopter, and the crew will be left to go down with the ship.

I wonder if the treasure/salvage ship Odyssey is headin' that way to 'recover' the 'lost treasures' that abound within those shipping containers! I bet there's tons (literally-obviously) of cool chit in them things!!!

My god... when will we learn? Not before it is too late...

Wow, I had no idea that those containers were just stacked up on ships like that. Is there nothing else that secures them to the ship?

Hey Pitmanlaw, Look at the crack, Ships metal is generaly 2-3 inches thick. You think they will patch it? This ship is junk now. Salvage vessels are probably already in route.

Reading these comments has been very entertaining. The critically uninformed and the tragically stupid, drawn to their keyboards to spew nonsense.

"the gross incompetence or obscene greed (or both) of someone who failed to see the danger of overloading a vessel to that degree."

"I'll believe oil will be gone when nothing is made out of plastic anymore"

Registered in Liberia. That's all you need to know.