AFTER a week dogged with tragedies in the Hunter, some of us could be forgiven for not immediately recognising the name YM Efficiency. Yet that cargo freighter was perhaps one of the most recognisable in the region a few years ago after it lost 81 shipping containers off the coast.
It seems that commercial trawlermen, though, haven't had much opportunity to forget that particular incident.
Murray Ham told Newcastle Herald journalist Sage Swinton he had pulled up plenty of debris he attributed to the vessel in the intervening years despite an Australian Maritime Safety Authority clean-up effort that netted 720 tonnes of waste.
"It's given us some grief," Mr Ham said. "I reckon we've caught 80 bikes.
"There's been face masks, specimen jars. Carpet is the scary one because it's so heavy when it's wet.
"We've pulled up whole walls of the containers."
The clean-up was a mammoth task, and even AMSA conceded it was unlikely to glean every ounce of lost material due simply to the scale of what went overboard. The company that owned the responsible vessel reached a confidential settlement with the regulator over the cost of that effort.
Anecdotally, trawlers say their catch seems to have changed as certain species rise or fall after such a drastic and sudden change to the environment off the coast. Given the depths and distance involved, it may never be completely quantified.
But what is clear is that such incidents carry a heavy toll - if not on those of us above the water, on the creatures that inhabit its depths.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's February 2020 report into the lost containers found that the weights and distribution of containers in some bays of the ship "were such that calculated forces exceeded allowable force limits".
Ultimately, it appears the regulatory process in dealing with the incident has concluded far before at least some of the damage it has done appears to have entirely abated. It is imperative that the YM Efficiency stands as a warning to all operators that such major problems come with significant consequences. Hopefully it is more than commercial trawlers who are picking up on what that vessel has laid down.
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