Deep-sea vessels that recently went adrift off B.C.’s coast highlight marine shipping risks

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In late December, two deep-sea vessels went adrift off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

The bulk carrier CSL Tecumseh, loaded with 66,000 metric tonnes of gravel and sand, lost propulsion when its main engine broke down northwest of Tofino on Dec. 24.

A rescue operation was still under way for that vessel on Dec. 29 when, in the same region, the container ship GSL Eleni reported to the Canadian Coast Guard that it was “not under command,” meaning it could not manoeuvre. The 300-metre-long vessel was 13 nautical miles offshore, drifting with its rudder jammed to one side.

These incidents took place along a coastline that is home to Pacific Rim National Park, as well as one of Canada’s 19 UNESCO biosphere reserves. The region is an international draw for its old-growth temperate rainforests and coastal dunes.

The risk of cargo accidents at sea is clearly not limited to oil tankers: Container ships loaded with plastics, polystyrene foam and hazardous chemicals are routinely plying these waters – materials that can persist in the marine environment for decades. The ships also run on bunker fuel – a bulk carrier can hold up to three million litres, and the Tecumseh is one of the largest ships of its kind in the world.

Marcie Callewaert, who lives on a small island off of Tofino, was monitoring marine-traffic radio around suppertime on Dec. 29, on the channel that she and her husband use when he is at sea, when she overheard the back and forth of a rescue operation.

The Tecumseh was already under tow and directly offshore her beachfront home at that time, but when she checked online for vessel tracking data, she saw there was a second ship in distress.

“The Eleni was drifting this way,” she recounted. She heard the captain of the tugboat Lauren Foss declare that he could not connect a tow line to the ship: It was too dark, the sea was too rough and he wasn’t going to put his crew at risk. The operation would resume at first light the next day.

In the end, both vessels were secured and towed to the port of Victoria for repairs. The success, she said, still carries a reminder of the constant risk of a marine disaster.

An early warning came in November of 2016, when the Hanjin Seattle cargo ship lost 35 containers in rough seas near the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Its owners were eventually forced to pay for some of the cleanup after debris washed up around Tofino and nearby islands.

Then, in October, 2021, the MV Zim Kingston lost more than 100 containers during a storm off Tofino. It limped down to the protected waters off Victoria, where a large, dangerous fire burned for days on its deck while at anchor. Most of the lost containers, including two packed with hazardous chemicals, were never recovered.

“I picked up Zim Kingston debris off our island here,” Ms. Callewaert said. She is anxious when she spots deep-sea vessels loitering in the open waters off Tofino while waiting for a berth in the ports of Vancouver or Seattle – that is how the Zim Kingston lost its cargo.

The federal Transportation Safety Board is still conducting a complex investigation into the Zim Kingston incident, and it could be another year before it issues its recommendations.

But there are lessons from the Zim Kingston. An all-party committee of the House of Commons reviewed the case, noting that rising extreme weather conditions, combined with global marine shipping trends toward the use of larger container ships, mean increased risk to Canada’s coastlines.

The standing committee on fisheries and oceans, in a report last October, concluded that Canada’s waters are vulnerable to marine cargo container spills, and produced 29 recommendations for change.

“The federal government, provinces and coastal communities are currently not operationally prepared to effectively manage marine cargo container spills,” the committee found. “Salvage capability required to mitigate the long-term environmental impacts of marine debris is still lacking. At present, there is no capability to track floating containers and recover sunken ones. In addition, marine emergency towing and firefighting capability is still deficient.”

Robert Lewis-Manning, president of the B.C.-based Chamber of Shipping, said the two near misses in December show that Canada’s emergency response capacity is improving.

”I think that the Coast Guard and Transport Canada have made incredible strides in a short period of time,” he said. It’s not all in place yet, he said, but it is moving: “There’s a ton of policy and legislative pieces on the table right now.”

Derek Moss, the Canadian Coast Guard’s assistant commissioner for the Western region, confirmed that protocols have changed since the Zim Kingston incident. Last April, when a particularly strong storm was brewing off the coast of Vancouver Island, the Coast Guard contacted five ships that were considered to present a risk, and strongly encouraged them to move further offshore, or to take shelter in protected waters.

Had the storm worsened, Capt. Moss said he was prepared to order the ships to safety, should there have been “a realistic danger of incident of marine pollution that could harm the ship, the sailors, the marine environment, the coastal community.”

Nationally, marine shipping policy is changing as well, he said. Canada has policies and procedures for marine oil spills, but now it is developing a framework to deal with a broader set of marine pollution incidents. “Hazardous and noxious substances is something that we’re going to be moving into. The Zim Kingston really catalyzed that.”

When the Coast Guard responded to the Tecumseh and the Eleni, Capt. Moss said there was no question that they would be towed to safety.

But what happens next is less clear.

Sau Sau Liu, a spokesperson for Transport Canada, said the two ships with mechanical issues are not deemed to be a hazard.

“The GSL Eleni and CSL Tecumseh are not currently detained. Their mechanical issues were reported to authorities in a timely manner and the vessels have complied with the appropriate Canadian and international regulations,” she wrote in an e-mailed response to questions from The Globe and Mail.

While anchored off Victoria, another carrier was brought alongside the Tecumseh to collect its load. It will remain docked at the city’s cruise-ship terminal until March, when it can go to dry dock for repairs.

”Preparations are currently under way to shift the vessel to a shipyard where permanent repairs will be completed,” Brigitte Hébert, spokesperson for The CSL Group, said in an e-mail.

The Eleni is owned by Global Ship Lease, and chartered to Maersk. A spokesman for Maersk, Tom Boyd, declined to identify the cargo onboard. The Eleni was set to leave Victoria’s cruise terminal on Tuesday, to make way for the Tecumseh. The company plans to have it towed to Seattle, where its cargo will be loaded to another ship to make the transit to Yokohama, Japan.

Gerald Graham, a consultant on international marine environment policy who is based in Victoria, raised the alarm about the two disabled vessels over social media. In an interview, he said Transport Canada should be doing more to assure the public that the vessels are seaworthy before they are allowed to leave Victoria’s waters.

“The Zim Kingston was a wake-up call,” he said. But he isn’t convinced that the safety regime has improved enough to protect the region’s fragile marine environment and its endangered population of southern resident killer whales.

“We dodged a bullet with these two incidents, but we are cutting it kind of close,” he said.