How Container Ships Are Causing A Frenzy At American Ports - Cheddar Explainers

this is miami a city known for its beaches nightlife this guy and its extensive channel deepening projects okay that last one only applies if your idea of fun is following the effects of global trade on local ports and here at cheddar that is absolutely our idea of fun so here's why the port of miami is just as much of a hot spot as miami beach from 2013 to 2015 the port of miami spent two years and 205 million dollars deepening this channel from 42 feet to 50 feet just three years later the port requested a second project to make the channel even deeper and they're far from the only ones this process called dredging is an infrastructure sensation that's been sweeping the nation's ports for the last 10 to 15 years so what's going on why are all these ports in a dredging frenzy the simple answer is these gigantic ships container ships are the backbone of the global economy delivering millions of tons of goods every year quick shipping vocabulary side note ships are typically referred to by how many of these 20 foot long containers they can carry each is called a teu or 20 foot equivalent unit so a ship is said to carry say 5000 teu or 10 000 teu okay back to the story since the late 1980s container ships have gotten a lot bigger their average size has increased by 90 percent between 1996 and 2015. the first ship that carried only containers carried 68 of them and the ship lines discovered pretty quickly that there are a lot of economies of scale in building container ships you can build a much bigger ship without a much bigger crew without more engines and and so forth and so they have increased the size of container ships massively since that time in essence it is the the decision of a few large shipping companies that drives the process shipping companies don't just launch new ships and call it a day what happens is that the biggest ships take over a particular trade route which knocks the ships that previously did that route down to a secondary route that cascading effect continues until the smallest ships are knocked out of rotation altogether after a few decades of this the biggest ships are now so big that they can't fit in most american ports there are several ways a ship can be too big for a port it can be too wide to fit in a channel or too tall to sail under a bridge but the most important ship measurement the one that kicked off all of those port dredging projects is the ship's draft this refers to the distance from the water line to the bottom of the ship's hull when a channel leading to a port isn't deep enough to accommodate a ship it'll get stuck if you look at the largest container vessels now in operation they have a maximum draft of surround around between 52 and 53 feet that means if they are fully loaded many ports for example had harbors that were in the range of 42-43 feet at the deepest part and so the port had to say do we want to put out the money to deepen this channel it's a considerable expenditure and of course it has to be maintained at that dent as we saw at the beginning of this video many american ports answered that question with a resounding yes these are all the ports in the u.s that accept container ships and these are all the ports that have dredged recently are currently dredging or have dredge proposals in the works for ports this calculation makes sense the number of big ships calling it u.s ports is on the rise and it is really important for ports to be able to attract the ships that deliver all the goods of our globalized economy according to one study in 2018 american ports and shipping contributed 5.4 trillion dollars to the economy about 26 percent of the country's gdp but for all the economic benefits dredging itself has a few major downsides the first is that it's just a lot easier and faster for shipping companies to build bigger ships than it is to dredge a deeper channel meaning ports are sort of constantly playing catch-up take the port of boston from 2018 to 2020 a 350 million dollar dredge project deepened the channel to 50 feet this allowed the port to handle ships with a capacity of 12 to 14 000 teu but ships with a 15 000 teu capacity had already been introduced way back in 2006 and who foots the bill of these expensive projects in large part its taxpayers through the u.s army corps of engineers or state and federal funding a second downside is the lack of guarantees that dredging will pay off what makes all of this risky is that the ship lines typically are not making long-term commitments you are hoping that deepening your harbor will bring more ships your way will bring more business your way will bring more jobs your way but it may not you have no guarantee and of course this is very long-lived infrastructure but you don't really know what this ship line intends to do five or ten years from now and the final major downside of dredging is the effects on the environment first is this dredge spoil depending on what industries operate nearby the spoil can be really contaminated and then there's the environment that's left behind for which dredging can be really destructive for an example let's head back to miami remember that dredging project from the start of this video it caused a lot of damage to miami's coral reef so in the process of deepening and widening the port to make way for these super-sized shipping vessels to come through we think over 250 acres of coral reef at least were buried in dredging sediment in the course of the project they ended up illegally killing over 560 000 corals that's probably an underestimate by at least half for those of us who aren't coral experts here's a quick summary of what they do lots of fish live in and around it so it supports healthy fisheries they've isolated chemical compounds that have been used in important medicines they protect coastlines from storm surge coral reefs also promote a great small businesses diving and tourism they're estimated to bring billions of dollars a year to the florida economy alone and they're some of the most biodiverse places in the world neither the port of miami nor the american association of port authorities responded to a request for comment this pressure on ports and their local environments won't end if ships continue to get bigger a 2017 mckinsey report called the prospect of 50 000 teu ships not unthinkable in the next half century ultimately ports have very little say in the size of these ships the ship lines now have considerable market power what they have been able to do is go to the individual ports and say we need you to do this and if you don't do this we're not going to come here anymore i mean ideally what you would want to have is is this good for well in assen this is good for society does it does it bring any any value for for all of us i think that is that is the question that should be the core question thanks for watching this story of the race between two cornerstones of global trade be sure to leave your thoughts 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Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,117,063

Rating: 4.8269978 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, cheddar explores, explainer, suez canal, suez, canal, container ship, container ships, shipping, ports, american ports, boston port, miami port, los angeles, suez canal blocked, dredge, dredging, harbors, canals, harbor, freight, cargo ship, shipping container, trade, global trade, geopolitics, maersk, largest container ship, channel, ship hull, ship draft, ship size, boat, international trade, shipping vessel, vessel

Id: MpBnJWqS8Hs

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021