In February 2004, 15 containers fell overboard from the Med Taipei when the vessel was traveling on rough seas from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The containers, 40 feet long by 8 feet wide by10 feet tall, contained a variety of cargo furniture, thousands of tires, several hundred thousand plastic items, miles of cyclone fencing, hospital beds, wheel chairs, recycled cardboard and clothing items. A U.S. Coast Guard report revealed the containers were inappropriately loaded on board the vessel. 

"The funds provided as a result of today's settlement will be used to restore habitats within the national marine sanctuary, an area of high biological productivity and diversity," said Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. "These alternative restoration projects will help mitigate some of the anticipated resource injuries."

The potential impact of the lost containers on natural resources includes the crushing and smothering of benthic organisms, the introduction of foreign habitat structure and shifts in local ecology. In addition, there is likely to be an expanding benthic footprint over time as the containers degrade and collapse, spreading their contents along the ocean floor. There is potential for entrapment of marine species by the cyclone fencing, ingestion of plastic wrappers and bags as they are released from the containers over time, as well as deposition of plastics and other oil-based products. 

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary has elected to use the settlement monies to undertake restoration projects in identified areas rather than to remove the remaining containers, whose locations are not known. 

A copy of the consent decree is available online.