Flotsam on the beach Between Tranum and Slette Strand on the west coast of Jutland, several containers were stranded after falling off a Maersk ship during the storm Pia in December 2023. (Archive photo). Unknown/Ritzau Scanpix

Maersk will begin the recovery of the containers that a Maersk ship lost last December in Jammerbugten during Storm Pia on Friday.

The shipping company announced this in a press release sent to Ritzau.

- We are now moving into a period of favorable weather conditions, and it is, therefore, a good time to start the recovery of the lost containers, says Kristian Brauner, fleet operations manager at Maersk, in the statement.

- The salvage vessel will revisit the locations on the seabed where we earlier this year spotted containers, and if we find more, we will also recover them

The search for containers on the ocean floor was halted at the end of March. The status at that time was that of the 46 lost containers, 5 were found on land, 21 were found on the seabed, while 20 were not found.

The 21 containers on the seabed, which are damaged and in pieces, will be recovered using a special grab.

Maersk has hired the offshore ship "Northern Victoria" with a 20-ton crane for the task.

During the search for the containers, what equates to four containers' worth of material was salvaged. The search covered an area of almost 1000 square kilometers.

Most of the containers were found at a depth of around 40 meters, Maersk further reports.

- We are fully aware that the seabed is also a part of the natural wilderness, and we will therefore carry out the recovery as delicately as possible," says Kristian Brauner.

It was on December 22 last year that the cargo ship "Mayview Maersk" lost the containers at sea 30 kilometers off Hanstholm during Storm Pia.

Many different items—including refrigerators, compressors, medical equipment, and shoes—washed ashore in the days that followed.

/ritzau/