April 3, 2021 • 32 mins
Last week, the world stopped and gaped when a container ship the size of a skyscraper got stuck in the Suez Canal. Using descriptions of satellite images, news footage, and even memes, Christine and JJ tell the story of what happened, why it mattered, what was done about it, and how social media (as usual) found ways to poke fun.
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JJ Hunt (00:04):
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:29):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:30):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashtag in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
Global shipping is something that we don't tend
to think about until the littlecomforts that we want aren't
available. And until the lastweek, when many of us were
following the plight of thecargo ship ever given that got
stuck in the Suez Canal. And wethought we would break some of
(01:08):
those images down today, becauseit's also fascinating and sort
of, under the radar in in a in apopular sense, we don't tend to
think about the infrastructurethat goes on, that gets us all
of our comforts and our materialthings that we that we're also
accustomed to. And so I thinkthat in order to have a good
(01:30):
context for this, we kind ofwant to start with the
geography. So JJ, can youdescribe sort of what's going on
around the Suez Canal and whythe canal was such a game
changer for for shipping,totally.
JJ Hunt (01:44):
So I called up some satellite images, some Google
Maps images of the Suez Canal,which is in Egypt, it's a narrow
channel running less than 200kilometers north to south, and
it connects the Red Sea in thesouth, to the Mediterranean Sea
in the north. So essentially, itconnects Asia to Europe. And
(02:10):
vice versa. In satellite images,this part of Egypt is sandy
desert in the south and itbecomes like greener farmland
near the North. If you zoom in abit, you can actually use the
patchwork of farm fields isevident in the in this northern
(02:30):
part of Egypt. This is the NileDelta right at the south end of
this part of Egypt, where thecanal is cut, you can see this
single blue channel of waterthat cuts north and there's a
real perfection to this channelof water, there's a uniformity
(02:51):
that marks it as human made.
It's straight. It's gotseemingly perfect banks,
especially when you're, youknow, when your vantage point is
at a satellite distance thebanks have this canal looked
very perfect, and the shorelinelooks like sand. But I believe
the actual shoreline is sand andpacked rock in this southern
(03:11):
section of the canal. And thenabout a third of the way along
from south to north, the canalenters great bitter lake. It's,
you know, just a pretty classicinland lake. And then it
continues north. The canalcontinues North past a smaller
Lake called Timpson Lake, andthen continues North again, on
(03:33):
its longest stretch toward portside in the Mediterranean. And
there's a part of this stretchwhere the canal is actually
doubled. So from overhead, youcan see the split with there,
where there's a sandbar, verythin sandbar that separates the
two parallel channels. And this,of course, allows ships to
(03:54):
travel in opposite directionsand past one another. And so
that is basically the canal asit cuts through this, this part
of Northern Egypt linking theRed Sea to the Mediterranean.
Christine Malec (04:09):
Let's go to the Red Sea because I want to
understand how this canalconnects what to what. So if you
were in the Red Sea, other thanthe Suez Canal, what are the
naval routes out of the Red Seaor into the Red Sea? What does
it connect you with?
JJ Hunt (04:28):
So the Red Sea is actually itself a fairly narrow
body of water and it's cutting.
It comes close to the south eastcoast of the African continent
where it meets the Arabian Seathrough the Gulf of Arden. So
(04:49):
maybe it's it's easier to workfrom large to small here. So if
you start with the Indian Ocean,the Indian Ocean which stretches
from Australia to, to the eastcoast of the African continent,
all the way up to India andSoutheast Asia. That's the
Indian Ocean. If you're going ifyou continue north through the
(05:11):
Indian Ocean, on the west sideof India, you come to the
Arabian Sea. And then theArabian Sea feeds into the Gulf
of Arden. This is a dip ofwater. This is a waterway that
passes between Yemen andSomalia, and then passes through
a very narrow channel to becomethe Red Sea. And this red sea
(05:35):
cuts inland between Saudi Arabiaand in mainland Africa. And it
cuts all the way kind of NorthWest. Up, up, up until you reach
what is the Suez the Gulf of theSuez the Gulf of Suez. And that
(05:55):
is where you start to splitEgypt. So now it's the Gulf of
Suez cuts up north west, and youactually have Egypt, to the
east, Egypt to the west, and itgets narrower or narrower, until
at the northern tip of the Gulfof Suez, you get the manmade
human made Suez Canal, whichbegins to cut in a straight
(06:21):
perfect channel, north, up tothe Mediterranean Sea, directly
north of it.
Christine Malec (06:34):
All these pieces are falling into place.
Okay, so if the Suez Canal waseither not there, or blocked, as
it was last week, ships wouldhave to instead of if they were
coming from Asia, instead ofheading north into the
Mediterranean, and then acrossthe Atlantic to North America,
(06:54):
or you know, stopping in Europeor across to North America,
instead of doing that, if I'mcorrect, they would have to veer
South way down around thesouthern tip of Africa and then
back on if they wanted to get toEurope, they'd have to
completely go around Africa backnorth, and then probably East a
bit for Europe or west, acrossthe Atlantic to North America.
(07:16):
Is that right?
JJ Hunt (07:16):
You've got it exactly right. So if you are traveling
from Asia, Southeast Asia,India, anywhere in, in Asia, by
boat, you would cross theArabian Sea, though, up the Gulf
of Arden, up the Red Sea, andthen you can cut this very small
200 kilometer length of the SuezCanal, and end up in the
(07:39):
Mediterranean Sea, and directlynorth is Turkey, then you've got
Greece and Italy. So you'reright. In Europe, it's it's
relatively quick. Without thatroute, you have to go all the
way across the Indian Ocean, youhave to go south, down the east
coast of Africa, hook around thehorn. So that's right around
(07:59):
South Africa, come all the wayup the coast, along the west
coast of Africa. And then ifyou're going into Europe, you
have to then go curve all theway back around past between
Morocco, and Spain, and get intothe Mediterranean to the two
ports in Italy, Greece, and soforth. If you're going to
(08:21):
Europe, it's a massive way allthe way around. If you can cut
that little 200, you know, 200kilometer stretch of land in
Egypt, you can eliminate amassive amount of travel, which
of course is a mass amount offuel burned in you're there in a
fraction of the time. So that's,that's why this strip of land,
(08:43):
this canal that cuts this stripof land is so vital.
Christine Malec (08:49):
It's making me so twitchy to be on a boat. So
the cargo ships, I'm pretty surethat I don't have a sense of any
kind of sense of scale of howbig these actually are. So can
you describe either cargo shipsin general or or this ship in
particular?
JJ Hunt (09:05):
Yeah, these container ships are, I mean, they're, just
massive and the one that gotstuck the ever given is one of
the world's longest it's one ofthe world's biggest, it's 1300
feet long, and almost 200 feetwide. Those numbers are big
enough that you really needsomething to compare it to
(09:27):
right. The Empire State Buildingis 102 storeys tall, and it's 12
150 feet without the antenna and187 feet wide. So it is entirely
appropriate to imagine theEmpire State Building on its
side to conjure the scale ofthis ship. It's that big. It
(09:52):
really is a skyscraper on itsside, traveling through the
oceans there. Massive and emptycontainer ships are. They're
kind of like giant elongatedbathtubs, right, they're kind of
empty. They're big, hollow,empty bathtubs. The only
(10:13):
difference is that they've gotthe container ships have these
cross walls that go from side toside. And these are for
structural integrity, but theyalso help create perfect bays
for shipping containers. And thewalls, these cross walls have
vertical rails on both sides,and they're positioned exactly
(10:34):
40 feet apart. So this creates aprecise slot for a 40 foot
shipping container, which is astandardized shipping container
can be dropped in, so that thecontainers sit inside the belly
of the ship, they run parallelto the ship, with their ends
slotted between the rails onthese cross walls.
Christine Malec (10:59):
Now, my understanding is that what
happened is that there was acombination of high winds and
the sheer height of thecontainers parked on top of each
other made a sale effect total.
And so it blew the shipsideways. So how tall was it
when when it was fully loadedwhen it's fully loaded?
JJ Hunt (11:22):
So the Ever Given, you can stack something like eight
containers high inside. So onceyou've filled up the inside of
this bathtub, they use the samecranes that load the shipping
containers in to actually builda roof deck. So what you end up
with when you filled the youfilled the ship, and then put
(11:44):
the roof deck on, you end upwith something that looks like a
barge, there are no significantsides to speak of, there's no
you know, they're very smallrailing. But at this scale, the
railing is hardly evennoticeable, and you have a flat
top. And then what they do isthey install vertical grids,
which are basically the same asthe cross walls that are inside.
So then you have these, theseslot slotted walls, these walls
(12:08):
on top of this barge, and youslot more containers on top and
some ship like the ever givencan get eight containers high
inside 10 containers high on topof the deck. And that's this
wall right 10 containers high 22or 23 containers wide. In total,
(12:30):
these big ships can handle20,000 containers. 20,000! They
are massive. I'm really notkidding when I say it looks like
the Empire State Building on itsside, right. And aside from the
pointed bow of the ship, theyreally look very boxy, very
solid. So the containers areperfectly stacked. And that
(12:55):
gives the ships straight sidesand often a flat top. So the
silhouette of one of these shipswhen it's fully loaded, kind of
it appears monolithic. But thecontainers themselves are
actually different colors. Solike their blocks that make up
this near cuboid. And the blocksare readily apparent because the
(13:18):
the containers themselves tendto be in solid colors, Rusty
reds, forest greens, white,orange, blue. And so on top of
the of the ship, you've gotthis, what looks like almost
like a 3d quilt like perfectlystacked colored kids blocks. And
so if you're looking at it fromthe ends of the ship, either,
you know the front of the back,you see squares, the ends of the
(13:41):
containers, these squares, theseperfect squares in a grid. And
if you're looking at it from thesides, you see the length of
these containers, theserectangular containers. So you
see these, it's a grid ofrectangles when viewed from the
side. And they are massive andtall. So you're absolutely right
when the wind hits they the shiphad traveled into a dust storm
(14:04):
with high winds. And when thewind hits it at the wrong angle,
it's it's it's it's a flatsurface, it's it's wind hitting
the side of a building. And soyou're in water, it's gonna push
you at a line and that's exactlywhat seems to have happened
here.
Christine Malec (14:21):
Is it hard to get a sense of scale when you're
looking at the ship?
JJ Hunt (14:24):
Yeah, it's it doesn't make it's like we were talking
about with the moon. It doesn'tmake any sense until you compare
it to something else. And that'swhy some of the images of the
ship being dug out are sofantastic because you do get a
sense of scale when you compareit to either the tugboats or the
(14:46):
pieces of dredging equipment ordigging equipment that were used
either in water and or on land.
The scale becomes apparent andit's it's downright comical.
Christine Malec (14:57):
And so walk us through what does it look like
when ship was was wedged inthere and how was it removed.
JJ Hunt (15:02):
So on March 23, the ever given was traveling north
right caught up in the Sandstormand got wedged kind of like a
toothpick cutting across a windpipe. So I've got a satellite
image-
Christine Malec (15:15):
Ow!
JJ Hunt (15:15):
I know what that's really what it looks like!
Christine Malec (15:18):
Thanks for that! Ha ha!
JJ Hunt (15:21):
So I got a satellite image here, it's an overhead
image of this stuck ship. So onmy screen is an image of the
southern section of this canalwhere it got stuck. And it's the
image is oriented so that thedark turquoise water of the
canal is basically a perfectstrip running more or less
vertically up and down themiddle of my screen. the shores
of the canal look like sand fromthis distance, like I say, but
(15:43):
like I believe at sand impactstone when you get into closer
views. to our left, that's theWest Bank to our right is the
east bank. And on the West Bank,beyond the sandy shoreline,
there's some green plots of landand some rooftops and whatnot.
And on our right beyond thesandy shoreline is just more
sand. There's nothing but sandon the right, and the ship the
(16:04):
ever given from overhead. It isshaped like a long, thin bullet.
And the bow the nose of the shiphas clearly run aground on the
right so it has dug into theeast bank. And the stern the
rear of the ship appears to haveswung out and has almost made
contact with the bank on theleft the West Bank, it was stuck
(16:26):
in the sandy shallows on thewest side. But my understanding
is that the ship itself didn'tmake contact with the shore. So
the ship crosses the canal atabout a 45 degree angle and
blocks it entirely. There's nogetting around it at all.
Christine Malec (16:42):
Yikes. Now, I know many strategies were
thought of and tried. But whatwas the strategy that ultimately
got it for you?
JJ Hunt (16:51):
Well they needed three.
Apparently All three were theyused and all three were
required. So they had to removesand from underneath the ends of
the ship where it was stuck.
They needed to remove sand fromaround the bow of the ship where
it had wedged into theshoreline. And they needed to
push and pull the ship back inline with the canal. So the
(17:12):
first thing they did was theygot a dredger in a dredger looks
like a regular ship, but it hasa totally open bow that is, like
it's the bow is like a framethat appears to be made of steel
girders. So it's completelyopen, and it's maybe the 1/6 of
the size of the ever given. Soit's a big ship, but only 1/6 of
(17:34):
the size of the giant cargo shipthat it's brought in to help
save. And what it does is itplants itself quite close to the
shore quite close to the to theship, and it drops a vertical
pole out of the stern that actslike an anchor and it allows it
to pivot but remain rooted inplace. And then out of the
front. This open front of the ofthe dredger is a long, thick
(17:59):
pipe and it shoots downunderwater at about a 45 degree
angle and the tip of it.
According to the artistsrenderings that I've seen, the
tip of this pipe has like acutting head like it looks like
a spinning fan blades andthere's also a vacuum nozzle
attached. And so what happens isit buries itself in the muck and
(18:19):
sand and then the switches onthese fan blades that chops up
the muck and sand underwater andthe vacuum sucks up the sand
comes up the pipe through thepump in the middle of the ship
and shoots out the back in areally long hosing. It's
something like 500 feet long,and it shoots out the back of
(18:40):
this 500 foot long hose to asafe dumping area. So that's the
dredger it was dredging sandfrom underneath both the the bow
and the stern. And then you'vegot the digging out of the bow.
So these are the wildest images.
So the okay the one of theimportant things to understand
(19:03):
is the shape of the bow of aship like this because it's it's
unique. It's called a bulbousbow, it looks like a protruding
chin. So imagine the bow of aship in profile facing our right
and this and we're able to seeabove and below the waterline.
(19:23):
So above the waterline, the holecuts back in under the bow right
kind of like one side of aletter V. But under the
waterline. The whole then curvesand juts back out again with a
bulb so it looks like thisjutting chin in that extends out
(19:44):
just about as far as the tip ofthe bow above the waterline and
this shape. This very particularshape helps reduce wave
resistance. So what happenedwhen the ship came in and swung
around the tip of it hits theshoreline 16 feet of the bulb
got wedged into the sand on theshort dug right in, like just
(20:09):
straight in. And so what theyhad to do on top of getting the
dredger to pull sand out fromunder the ship, they had to get
excavators and bulldozers todrive in on the shore, in
literally dig out this bulb,this Oh, yeah, this bow. And
this is where it's absurd,because these diggers next to
(20:32):
the ship, images of this reallydrive home the size of these
massive, massive ships, soexcavators are big, especially
industrial excavators. Thesearen't the kind of excavators
that would come and like, digout your basement. These are
massive industrial excavators.
And, like, each one of them isthe size of a bungalow, like
(20:53):
literally the size of a smallhouse. But in the photos, the
machines are digging out theship. If you're actually trying
to take a picture of both anexcavator and the ship, you
can't possibly fit the height ofthe hole in the frame, not even
close. Oh, they are so dwarfed.
(21:16):
So there's there's a whole suiteof images that feature
excavators and machinery on theleft parked at the edge of the
water. And they've got their,their digging arms outstretched
where you know, pulling backbuckets of sand. And on the
right side of the image, there'snothing but Hall. There's just
the whole of the ship and itdoesn't you can't even get it in
(21:37):
it extends beyond the upper edgeof the frame, right? massive. My
favorite picture shows abulldozer that's parked beside
the stuck bow. And there are afew workers in neon green vests,
they're tiny, tiny, tiny, butstanding beside the bulldozer,
you can see that they are thesame height as the bulldozer
(21:58):
tire. So these are like thisbulldozer has six foot tires. So
that gives you an idea of howbig the bulldozer is. But the
ship that's to the right is somassive the ever given is so
huge. There's an anchor that ispulled up, but it is it's the
kind of anchor that drops out ofthe side of the ship doesn't go
(22:19):
over the railing it comes rightout the side of the of the hall
and it's pulled up and you cansee that the anchor is the same
size as the bulldozer. That'sthe scale we're talking about.
So you're digging, you'redredging for the sand from from
below. They're digging out thebow. And then the next thing you
(22:40):
need are you need to move it youneed to push it and pull it you
need tugboats and so tugboatsthe classic tugboat is as low
and squat, it's relatively wideand it's ringed with what looks
like thick black rubber. And sothat there are lots of images of
tugboats pushing and pulling andtowing the ever the ever given.
(23:02):
I think they use something like13 different tugboats in this
operation he needed he had tothrow everything at this thing,
but that the images that I foundmost interesting were the ones
where there are multipletugboats lined up alongside the
ship. So I generally picture inmy mind tugboats pushing on
bigger ships head on right likeyou knows right up against the
(23:24):
hole. And then you know, theypush with all your mind. That's
how I imagined tugboats working,or maybe pulling with a winch
and a tow line right. But one ofthe techniques they apparently
used was stacking tugboatsalongside the help the haul,
parallel to the ship, becausetugboat propellers underneath
can rotate fully underwater, sothey can actually turn their
(23:49):
propellers underwater so thatthe ship can push sideways. And
so I've got an image here ofthese two tugboats side by side
parallel to the ship. And Iimagine what they're doing is
turning their propellersunderwater so that they can push
this thing sideways. It was justa different technique I hadn't
seen that's not what I usuallyconjure, as as as a way of
(24:12):
utilizing these tugboats intheir, you know, incredibly
powerful engines.
Ultimately, what they what theydid once they freed the rear
they dredged out underneath thestern they dug out around the
bow and they dredged out fromunder the bow then what they did
was they had tugboats pushing onthe rear side so that it would
(24:37):
swing back toward the center ofthe canal. They had tugboats
pulling on winches, the front sothat it would be pulled back in
line with the with the canal.
And all of that was was youknow, so there are 13 different
tugboats all being used at thesame time, maybe all at the same
time. to push to push the backto pull the front end everything
(25:02):
had already been dug out andthat's how they had to do
basically drag it back in linewith the channel because at at
the center of the channel it'sof course much deeper and once
you get there then they can towit they could tow it straight up
and what they did was they towedit out of the channel into that
lake what is it the bitterbitter like yeah the great
(25:26):
bitter like so they then draggedit to great bitter lake where it
could be assessed to see if itwas still seaworthy.
Christine Malec (25:35):
Now i'm sure some of the satellite images
would have showed the backup ofother ships can you say
something about that.
Clearly you've seen something
JJ Hunt (25:43):
Heh heh.
Some of them are,again, they're absurd and they
were building up over time sothe first few ships that were
backed up you saw some imagesbeing released by nasa and
bumped around on online and andyou have to zoom out even
farther in order to get thescale where you're seeing part
(26:06):
of the red sea and you're seeingpart of the canal in the stuck
ship so at this point the theships are looking like grains of
rice like that's the kind ofscale that we're talking about
here and what you see in the redsea is this orderly line of
grains of rice starting to buildup of ships waiting to go and
(26:28):
then over as the days get longerthe the line of grains of rice
in the sea gets longer andlonger and then curves back it
bends around the line of shipsbends back on itself oh okay and
then it gets then there's justtoo many of them and they can't
kind of keep up this exact lineso then it gets a little bit
scattered and the by the endthere were 367 vessels stuck
(26:54):
waiting some of the north endsome of the south and the images
look like now you've got anorganized line of of grains of
rice floating and waiting withthese giant anchors holding them
in place and then there's ascattering of other grains of
rice that are clearly likethey're just not in line anymore
(27:15):
they're just there they're justwaiting but apparently a cost of
something like six to 10 billionus dollars a day i mean just
incredible and they i mean theyhad to move 30,000 cubic meters
of sand and 13 tugboats butapparently that one of the real
kickers the reason they finallygot it to move remember we
talked about that supermoon inthe last episode with the moon
(27:40):
the tides were higher and thatwas one of the final things that
helped them be able to move itwas the was the full moon hot
the super moon high tide helpedget enough water under this
thing they could refloat it andget it moving again.
Christine Malec (27:56):
Wow.
JJ Hunt (27:58):
Thank you super moon.
Christine Malec (27:59):
Thank you super moon. It's easy to just treat
this like oh wow that's amazingwhat a laugh and to make light
of it which we will do again ina moment but it's true it did
general genuinely cause hardshipand supply chain problems and
yeah it's it's not a laughablesituation at all.
JJ Hunt (28:17):
No, it was pretty serious are those involved yeah
for sure
Christine Malec (28:20):
Absolutely.
However, predictably, iunderstand that a sprout of
memes has arisen from from thisincident can we can we go over
some of those
JJ Hunt (28:31):
Yeah some great memes so one meme which was using a
photograph that was taken fromone of the ships that was behind
the ever given so there was aship that was really close to it
at one point and so it's fromthe top of this container ship
so you can see over the bed ofall the tops of the other
(28:52):
container ships you can see theever v ever given you know stuck
in the canal and on top isgodzilla and king kong fighting
one another because of coursethe movies coming up so someone
took the image from the posterof these two giant beasts on top
of the ever ever given that'spretty good and then lots of
(29:13):
different variations on thetheme so images of these diggers
beside the giant hall of theship the scale of it was such
that people did all kinds ofthings with you know like me
working on my midterm exams andthe you know the looming school
year ahead whatever there'sdifferent versions of that but
(29:33):
i've got one here that's gotthat image of the bulldozer
pardon me the digger theexcavator with the with its
bucket outstretched and thegiant ship just you know
completely dominating the restof the image and the giant ship
is labeled the crushing despairfrom everything from the past
year and then and then theexcavator is labeled you doing
(29:53):
your best yeah i saw i saw onethat was it using one of the
satellite images of the of theship stuck in the canal, and the
title was at least my mistakescan't be seen from space. It's
pretty good. And there was asomeone, that image of the
(30:15):
bulldozer, whether the tires arethe same size as the guys in
their neon vests, someone set upa Twitter account called guy
with the digger at the SuezCanal at Suez digger guy, and it
uses that image as their profilepicture. And the only the only
caption in their profile istrying my best, no promises. I
(30:37):
like that one. And then myfavorite was a little video meme
from Austin Powers. And there'sa there's a clip in the I think
it's the original Austin Powersmovie where Austin Powers the,
you know, international man ofmystery. The Spy is in the Dr.
evil's lair and he's travelingthrough the tunnels of this
(30:58):
underground layer in like abasically a golf cart that, you
know, he goes through thetunnels of this underground
power plant a rocket launching,I can't remember what it is. And
he gets in, he gets in a tunnelin a very narrow tunnel, and he
decides he's going to make athree point turn to get his
little golf cart out and he goesback and forth. Mike Myers so he
(31:20):
takes like, they take a minuteand a half or something
ridiculous of just like himgoing back and forth. Trying to
make a three point turn untilsomeone took an image of the
ever given and slapped it on topof that golf cart. So now you've
got Austin Powers, man ofmystery, trying to get this like
(31:40):
giant container ship in thisbasement hallway. That's pretty
good. I like that one.
Christine Malec (31:51):
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Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ
Hunt.
Christine Malec (00:29):
Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt (00:30):
And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where
the visuals of current eventsand the world around us get
hashtag in description richconversations.
Christine Malec (00:47):
Global shipping is something that we don't tend
to think about until the littlecomforts that we want aren't
available. And until the lastweek, when many of us were
following the plight of thecargo ship ever given that got
stuck in the Suez Canal. And wethought we would break some of
(01:08):
those images down today, becauseit's also fascinating and sort
of, under the radar in in a in apopular sense, we don't tend to
think about the infrastructurethat goes on, that gets us all
of our comforts and our materialthings that we that we're also
accustomed to. And so I thinkthat in order to have a good
(01:30):
context for this, we kind ofwant to start with the
geography. So JJ, can youdescribe sort of what's going on
around the Suez Canal and whythe canal was such a game
changer for for shipping,totally.
JJ Hunt (01:44):
So I called up some satellite images, some Google
Maps images of the Suez Canal,which is in Egypt, it's a narrow
channel running less than 200kilometers north to south, and
it connects the Red Sea in thesouth, to the Mediterranean Sea
in the north. So essentially, itconnects Asia to Europe. And
(02:10):
vice versa. In satellite images,this part of Egypt is sandy
desert in the south and itbecomes like greener farmland
near the North. If you zoom in abit, you can actually use the
patchwork of farm fields isevident in the in this northern
(02:30):
part of Egypt. This is the NileDelta right at the south end of
this part of Egypt, where thecanal is cut, you can see this
single blue channel of waterthat cuts north and there's a
real perfection to this channelof water, there's a uniformity
(02:51):
that marks it as human made.
It's straight. It's gotseemingly perfect banks,
especially when you're, youknow, when your vantage point is
at a satellite distance thebanks have this canal looked
very perfect, and the shorelinelooks like sand. But I believe
the actual shoreline is sand andpacked rock in this southern
(03:11):
section of the canal. And thenabout a third of the way along
from south to north, the canalenters great bitter lake. It's,
you know, just a pretty classicinland lake. And then it
continues north. The canalcontinues North past a smaller
Lake called Timpson Lake, andthen continues North again, on
(03:33):
its longest stretch toward portside in the Mediterranean. And
there's a part of this stretchwhere the canal is actually
doubled. So from overhead, youcan see the split with there,
where there's a sandbar, verythin sandbar that separates the
two parallel channels. And this,of course, allows ships to
(03:54):
travel in opposite directionsand past one another. And so
that is basically the canal asit cuts through this, this part
of Northern Egypt linking theRed Sea to the Mediterranean.
Christine Malec (04:09):
Let's go to the Red Sea because I want to
understand how this canalconnects what to what. So if you
were in the Red Sea, other thanthe Suez Canal, what are the
naval routes out of the Red Seaor into the Red Sea? What does
it connect you with?
JJ Hunt (04:28):
So the Red Sea is actually itself a fairly narrow
body of water and it's cutting.
It comes close to the south eastcoast of the African continent
where it meets the Arabian Seathrough the Gulf of Arden. So
(04:49):
maybe it's it's easier to workfrom large to small here. So if
you start with the Indian Ocean,the Indian Ocean which stretches
from Australia to, to the eastcoast of the African continent,
all the way up to India andSoutheast Asia. That's the
Indian Ocean. If you're going ifyou continue north through the
(05:11):
Indian Ocean, on the west sideof India, you come to the
Arabian Sea. And then theArabian Sea feeds into the Gulf
of Arden. This is a dip ofwater. This is a waterway that
passes between Yemen andSomalia, and then passes through
a very narrow channel to becomethe Red Sea. And this red sea
(05:35):
cuts inland between Saudi Arabiaand in mainland Africa. And it
cuts all the way kind of NorthWest. Up, up, up until you reach
what is the Suez the Gulf of theSuez the Gulf of Suez. And that
(05:55):
is where you start to splitEgypt. So now it's the Gulf of
Suez cuts up north west, and youactually have Egypt, to the
east, Egypt to the west, and itgets narrower or narrower, until
at the northern tip of the Gulfof Suez, you get the manmade
human made Suez Canal, whichbegins to cut in a straight
(06:21):
perfect channel, north, up tothe Mediterranean Sea, directly
north of it.
Christine Malec (06:34):
All these pieces are falling into place.
Okay, so if the Suez Canal waseither not there, or blocked, as
it was last week, ships wouldhave to instead of if they were
coming from Asia, instead ofheading north into the
Mediterranean, and then acrossthe Atlantic to North America,
(06:54):
or you know, stopping in Europeor across to North America,
instead of doing that, if I'mcorrect, they would have to veer
South way down around thesouthern tip of Africa and then
back on if they wanted to get toEurope, they'd have to
completely go around Africa backnorth, and then probably East a
bit for Europe or west, acrossthe Atlantic to North America.
(07:16):
Is that right?
JJ Hunt (07:16):
You've got it exactly right. So if you are traveling
from Asia, Southeast Asia,India, anywhere in, in Asia, by
boat, you would cross theArabian Sea, though, up the Gulf
of Arden, up the Red Sea, andthen you can cut this very small
200 kilometer length of the SuezCanal, and end up in the
(07:39):
Mediterranean Sea, and directlynorth is Turkey, then you've got
Greece and Italy. So you'reright. In Europe, it's it's
relatively quick. Without thatroute, you have to go all the
way across the Indian Ocean, youhave to go south, down the east
coast of Africa, hook around thehorn. So that's right around
(07:59):
South Africa, come all the wayup the coast, along the west
coast of Africa. And then ifyou're going into Europe, you
have to then go curve all theway back around past between
Morocco, and Spain, and get intothe Mediterranean to the two
ports in Italy, Greece, and soforth. If you're going to
(08:21):
Europe, it's a massive way allthe way around. If you can cut
that little 200, you know, 200kilometer stretch of land in
Egypt, you can eliminate amassive amount of travel, which
of course is a mass amount offuel burned in you're there in a
fraction of the time. So that's,that's why this strip of land,
(08:43):
this canal that cuts this stripof land is so vital.
Christine Malec (08:49):
It's making me so twitchy to be on a boat. So
the cargo ships, I'm pretty surethat I don't have a sense of any
kind of sense of scale of howbig these actually are. So can
you describe either cargo shipsin general or or this ship in
particular?
JJ Hunt (09:05):
Yeah, these container ships are, I mean, they're, just
massive and the one that gotstuck the ever given is one of
the world's longest it's one ofthe world's biggest, it's 1300
feet long, and almost 200 feetwide. Those numbers are big
enough that you really needsomething to compare it to
(09:27):
right. The Empire State Buildingis 102 storeys tall, and it's 12
150 feet without the antenna and187 feet wide. So it is entirely
appropriate to imagine theEmpire State Building on its
side to conjure the scale ofthis ship. It's that big. It
(09:52):
really is a skyscraper on itsside, traveling through the
oceans there. Massive and emptycontainer ships are. They're
kind of like giant elongatedbathtubs, right, they're kind of
empty. They're big, hollow,empty bathtubs. The only
(10:13):
difference is that they've gotthe container ships have these
cross walls that go from side toside. And these are for
structural integrity, but theyalso help create perfect bays
for shipping containers. And thewalls, these cross walls have
vertical rails on both sides,and they're positioned exactly
(10:34):
40 feet apart. So this creates aprecise slot for a 40 foot
shipping container, which is astandardized shipping container
can be dropped in, so that thecontainers sit inside the belly
of the ship, they run parallelto the ship, with their ends
slotted between the rails onthese cross walls.
Christine Malec (10:59):
Now, my understanding is that what
happened is that there was acombination of high winds and
the sheer height of thecontainers parked on top of each
other made a sale effect total.
And so it blew the shipsideways. So how tall was it
when when it was fully loadedwhen it's fully loaded?
JJ Hunt (11:22):
So the Ever Given, you can stack something like eight
containers high inside. So onceyou've filled up the inside of
this bathtub, they use the samecranes that load the shipping
containers in to actually builda roof deck. So what you end up
with when you filled the youfilled the ship, and then put
(11:44):
the roof deck on, you end upwith something that looks like a
barge, there are no significantsides to speak of, there's no
you know, they're very smallrailing. But at this scale, the
railing is hardly evennoticeable, and you have a flat
top. And then what they do isthey install vertical grids,
which are basically the same asthe cross walls that are inside.
So then you have these, theseslot slotted walls, these walls
(12:08):
on top of this barge, and youslot more containers on top and
some ship like the ever givencan get eight containers high
inside 10 containers high on topof the deck. And that's this
wall right 10 containers high 22or 23 containers wide. In total,
(12:30):
these big ships can handle20,000 containers. 20,000! They
are massive. I'm really notkidding when I say it looks like
the Empire State Building on itsside, right. And aside from the
pointed bow of the ship, theyreally look very boxy, very
solid. So the containers areperfectly stacked. And that
(12:55):
gives the ships straight sidesand often a flat top. So the
silhouette of one of these shipswhen it's fully loaded, kind of
it appears monolithic. But thecontainers themselves are
actually different colors. Solike their blocks that make up
this near cuboid. And the blocksare readily apparent because the
(13:18):
the containers themselves tendto be in solid colors, Rusty
reds, forest greens, white,orange, blue. And so on top of
the of the ship, you've gotthis, what looks like almost
like a 3d quilt like perfectlystacked colored kids blocks. And
so if you're looking at it fromthe ends of the ship, either,
you know the front of the back,you see squares, the ends of the
(13:41):
containers, these squares, theseperfect squares in a grid. And
if you're looking at it from thesides, you see the length of
these containers, theserectangular containers. So you
see these, it's a grid ofrectangles when viewed from the
side. And they are massive andtall. So you're absolutely right
when the wind hits they the shiphad traveled into a dust storm
(14:04):
with high winds. And when thewind hits it at the wrong angle,
it's it's it's it's a flatsurface, it's it's wind hitting
the side of a building. And soyou're in water, it's gonna push
you at a line and that's exactlywhat seems to have happened
here.
Christine Malec (14:21):
Is it hard to get a sense of scale when you're
looking at the ship?
JJ Hunt (14:24):
Yeah, it's it doesn't make it's like we were talking
about with the moon. It doesn'tmake any sense until you compare
it to something else. And that'swhy some of the images of the
ship being dug out are sofantastic because you do get a
sense of scale when you compareit to either the tugboats or the
(14:46):
pieces of dredging equipment ordigging equipment that were used
either in water and or on land.
The scale becomes apparent andit's it's downright comical.
Christine Malec (14:57):
And so walk us through what does it look like
when ship was was wedged inthere and how was it removed.
JJ Hunt (15:02):
So on March 23, the ever given was traveling north
right caught up in the Sandstormand got wedged kind of like a
toothpick cutting across a windpipe. So I've got a satellite
image-
Christine Malec (15:15):
Ow!
JJ Hunt (15:15):
I know what that's really what it looks like!
Christine Malec (15:18):
Thanks for that! Ha ha!
JJ Hunt (15:21):
So I got a satellite image here, it's an overhead
image of this stuck ship. So onmy screen is an image of the
southern section of this canalwhere it got stuck. And it's the
image is oriented so that thedark turquoise water of the
canal is basically a perfectstrip running more or less
vertically up and down themiddle of my screen. the shores
of the canal look like sand fromthis distance, like I say, but
(15:43):
like I believe at sand impactstone when you get into closer
views. to our left, that's theWest Bank to our right is the
east bank. And on the West Bank,beyond the sandy shoreline,
there's some green plots of landand some rooftops and whatnot.
And on our right beyond thesandy shoreline is just more
sand. There's nothing but sandon the right, and the ship the
(16:04):
ever given from overhead. It isshaped like a long, thin bullet.
And the bow the nose of the shiphas clearly run aground on the
right so it has dug into theeast bank. And the stern the
rear of the ship appears to haveswung out and has almost made
contact with the bank on theleft the West Bank, it was stuck
(16:26):
in the sandy shallows on thewest side. But my understanding
is that the ship itself didn'tmake contact with the shore. So
the ship crosses the canal atabout a 45 degree angle and
blocks it entirely. There's nogetting around it at all.
Christine Malec (16:42):
Yikes. Now, I know many strategies were
thought of and tried. But whatwas the strategy that ultimately
got it for you?
JJ Hunt (16:51):
Well they needed three.
Apparently All three were theyused and all three were
required. So they had to removesand from underneath the ends of
the ship where it was stuck.
They needed to remove sand fromaround the bow of the ship where
it had wedged into theshoreline. And they needed to
push and pull the ship back inline with the canal. So the
(17:12):
first thing they did was theygot a dredger in a dredger looks
like a regular ship, but it hasa totally open bow that is, like
it's the bow is like a framethat appears to be made of steel
girders. So it's completelyopen, and it's maybe the 1/6 of
the size of the ever given. Soit's a big ship, but only 1/6 of
(17:34):
the size of the giant cargo shipthat it's brought in to help
save. And what it does is itplants itself quite close to the
shore quite close to the to theship, and it drops a vertical
pole out of the stern that actslike an anchor and it allows it
to pivot but remain rooted inplace. And then out of the
front. This open front of the ofthe dredger is a long, thick
(17:59):
pipe and it shoots downunderwater at about a 45 degree
angle and the tip of it.
According to the artistsrenderings that I've seen, the
tip of this pipe has like acutting head like it looks like
a spinning fan blades andthere's also a vacuum nozzle
attached. And so what happens isit buries itself in the muck and
(18:19):
sand and then the switches onthese fan blades that chops up
the muck and sand underwater andthe vacuum sucks up the sand
comes up the pipe through thepump in the middle of the ship
and shoots out the back in areally long hosing. It's
something like 500 feet long,and it shoots out the back of
(18:40):
this 500 foot long hose to asafe dumping area. So that's the
dredger it was dredging sandfrom underneath both the the bow
and the stern. And then you'vegot the digging out of the bow.
So these are the wildest images.
So the okay the one of theimportant things to understand
(19:03):
is the shape of the bow of aship like this because it's it's
unique. It's called a bulbousbow, it looks like a protruding
chin. So imagine the bow of aship in profile facing our right
and this and we're able to seeabove and below the waterline.
(19:23):
So above the waterline, the holecuts back in under the bow right
kind of like one side of aletter V. But under the
waterline. The whole then curvesand juts back out again with a
bulb so it looks like thisjutting chin in that extends out
(19:44):
just about as far as the tip ofthe bow above the waterline and
this shape. This very particularshape helps reduce wave
resistance. So what happenedwhen the ship came in and swung
around the tip of it hits theshoreline 16 feet of the bulb
got wedged into the sand on theshort dug right in, like just
(20:09):
straight in. And so what theyhad to do on top of getting the
dredger to pull sand out fromunder the ship, they had to get
excavators and bulldozers todrive in on the shore, in
literally dig out this bulb,this Oh, yeah, this bow. And
this is where it's absurd,because these diggers next to
(20:32):
the ship, images of this reallydrive home the size of these
massive, massive ships, soexcavators are big, especially
industrial excavators. Thesearen't the kind of excavators
that would come and like, digout your basement. These are
massive industrial excavators.
And, like, each one of them isthe size of a bungalow, like
(20:53):
literally the size of a smallhouse. But in the photos, the
machines are digging out theship. If you're actually trying
to take a picture of both anexcavator and the ship, you
can't possibly fit the height ofthe hole in the frame, not even
close. Oh, they are so dwarfed.
(21:16):
So there's there's a whole suiteof images that feature
excavators and machinery on theleft parked at the edge of the
water. And they've got their,their digging arms outstretched
where you know, pulling backbuckets of sand. And on the
right side of the image, there'snothing but Hall. There's just
the whole of the ship and itdoesn't you can't even get it in
(21:37):
it extends beyond the upper edgeof the frame, right? massive. My
favorite picture shows abulldozer that's parked beside
the stuck bow. And there are afew workers in neon green vests,
they're tiny, tiny, tiny, butstanding beside the bulldozer,
you can see that they are thesame height as the bulldozer
(21:58):
tire. So these are like thisbulldozer has six foot tires. So
that gives you an idea of howbig the bulldozer is. But the
ship that's to the right is somassive the ever given is so
huge. There's an anchor that ispulled up, but it is it's the
kind of anchor that drops out ofthe side of the ship doesn't go
(22:19):
over the railing it comes rightout the side of the of the hall
and it's pulled up and you cansee that the anchor is the same
size as the bulldozer. That'sthe scale we're talking about.
So you're digging, you'redredging for the sand from from
below. They're digging out thebow. And then the next thing you
(22:40):
need are you need to move it youneed to push it and pull it you
need tugboats and so tugboatsthe classic tugboat is as low
and squat, it's relatively wideand it's ringed with what looks
like thick black rubber. And sothat there are lots of images of
tugboats pushing and pulling andtowing the ever the ever given.
(23:02):
I think they use something like13 different tugboats in this
operation he needed he had tothrow everything at this thing,
but that the images that I foundmost interesting were the ones
where there are multipletugboats lined up alongside the
ship. So I generally picture inmy mind tugboats pushing on
bigger ships head on right likeyou knows right up against the
(23:24):
hole. And then you know, theypush with all your mind. That's
how I imagined tugboats working,or maybe pulling with a winch
and a tow line right. But one ofthe techniques they apparently
used was stacking tugboatsalongside the help the haul,
parallel to the ship, becausetugboat propellers underneath
can rotate fully underwater, sothey can actually turn their
(23:49):
propellers underwater so thatthe ship can push sideways. And
so I've got an image here ofthese two tugboats side by side
parallel to the ship. And Iimagine what they're doing is
turning their propellersunderwater so that they can push
this thing sideways. It was justa different technique I hadn't
seen that's not what I usuallyconjure, as as as a way of
(24:12):
utilizing these tugboats intheir, you know, incredibly
powerful engines.
Ultimately, what they what theydid once they freed the rear
they dredged out underneath thestern they dug out around the
bow and they dredged out fromunder the bow then what they did
was they had tugboats pushing onthe rear side so that it would
(24:37):
swing back toward the center ofthe canal. They had tugboats
pulling on winches, the front sothat it would be pulled back in
line with the with the canal.
And all of that was was youknow, so there are 13 different
tugboats all being used at thesame time, maybe all at the same
time. to push to push the backto pull the front end everything
(25:02):
had already been dug out andthat's how they had to do
basically drag it back in linewith the channel because at at
the center of the channel it'sof course much deeper and once
you get there then they can towit they could tow it straight up
and what they did was they towedit out of the channel into that
lake what is it the bitterbitter like yeah the great
(25:26):
bitter like so they then draggedit to great bitter lake where it
could be assessed to see if itwas still seaworthy.
Christine Malec (25:35):
Now i'm sure some of the satellite images
would have showed the backup ofother ships can you say
something about that.
Clearly you've seen something
JJ Hunt (25:43):
Heh heh.
Some of them are,again, they're absurd and they
were building up over time sothe first few ships that were
backed up you saw some imagesbeing released by nasa and
bumped around on online and andyou have to zoom out even
farther in order to get thescale where you're seeing part
(26:06):
of the red sea and you're seeingpart of the canal in the stuck
ship so at this point the theships are looking like grains of
rice like that's the kind ofscale that we're talking about
here and what you see in the redsea is this orderly line of
grains of rice starting to buildup of ships waiting to go and
(26:28):
then over as the days get longerthe the line of grains of rice
in the sea gets longer andlonger and then curves back it
bends around the line of shipsbends back on itself oh okay and
then it gets then there's justtoo many of them and they can't
kind of keep up this exact lineso then it gets a little bit
scattered and the by the endthere were 367 vessels stuck
(26:54):
waiting some of the north endsome of the south and the images
look like now you've got anorganized line of of grains of
rice floating and waiting withthese giant anchors holding them
in place and then there's ascattering of other grains of
rice that are clearly likethey're just not in line anymore
(27:15):
they're just there they're justwaiting but apparently a cost of
something like six to 10 billionus dollars a day i mean just
incredible and they i mean theyhad to move 30,000 cubic meters
of sand and 13 tugboats butapparently that one of the real
kickers the reason they finallygot it to move remember we
talked about that supermoon inthe last episode with the moon
(27:40):
the tides were higher and thatwas one of the final things that
helped them be able to move itwas the was the full moon hot
the super moon high tide helpedget enough water under this
thing they could refloat it andget it moving again.
Christine Malec (27:56):
Wow.
JJ Hunt (27:58):
Thank you super moon.
Christine Malec (27:59):
Thank you super moon. It's easy to just treat
this like oh wow that's amazingwhat a laugh and to make light
of it which we will do again ina moment but it's true it did
general genuinely cause hardshipand supply chain problems and
yeah it's it's not a laughablesituation at all.
JJ Hunt (28:17):
No, it was pretty serious are those involved yeah
for sure
Christine Malec (28:20):
Absolutely.
However, predictably, iunderstand that a sprout of
memes has arisen from from thisincident can we can we go over
some of those
JJ Hunt (28:31):
Yeah some great memes so one meme which was using a
photograph that was taken fromone of the ships that was behind
the ever given so there was aship that was really close to it
at one point and so it's fromthe top of this container ship
so you can see over the bed ofall the tops of the other
(28:52):
container ships you can see theever v ever given you know stuck
in the canal and on top isgodzilla and king kong fighting
one another because of coursethe movies coming up so someone
took the image from the posterof these two giant beasts on top
of the ever ever given that'spretty good and then lots of
(29:13):
different variations on thetheme so images of these diggers
beside the giant hall of theship the scale of it was such
that people did all kinds ofthings with you know like me
working on my midterm exams andthe you know the looming school
year ahead whatever there'sdifferent versions of that but
(29:33):
i've got one here that's gotthat image of the bulldozer
pardon me the digger theexcavator with the with its
bucket outstretched and thegiant ship just you know
completely dominating the restof the image and the giant ship
is labeled the crushing despairfrom everything from the past
year and then and then theexcavator is labeled you doing
(29:53):
your best yeah i saw i saw onethat was it using one of the
satellite images of the of theship stuck in the canal, and the
title was at least my mistakescan't be seen from space. It's
pretty good. And there was asomeone, that image of the
(30:15):
bulldozer, whether the tires arethe same size as the guys in
their neon vests, someone set upa Twitter account called guy
with the digger at the SuezCanal at Suez digger guy, and it
uses that image as their profilepicture. And the only the only
caption in their profile istrying my best, no promises. I
(30:37):
like that one. And then myfavorite was a little video meme
from Austin Powers. And there'sa there's a clip in the I think
it's the original Austin Powersmovie where Austin Powers the,
you know, international man ofmystery. The Spy is in the Dr.
evil's lair and he's travelingthrough the tunnels of this
(30:58):
underground layer in like abasically a golf cart that, you
know, he goes through thetunnels of this underground
power plant a rocket launching,I can't remember what it is. And
he gets in, he gets in a tunnelin a very narrow tunnel, and he
decides he's going to make athree point turn to get his
little golf cart out and he goesback and forth. Mike Myers so he
(31:20):
takes like, they take a minuteand a half or something
ridiculous of just like himgoing back and forth. Trying to
make a three point turn untilsomeone took an image of the
ever given and slapped it on topof that golf cart. So now you've
got Austin Powers, man ofmystery, trying to get this like
(31:40):
giant container ship in thisbasement hallway. That's pretty
good. I like that one.
Christine Malec (31:51):
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