They came with family or friends, bringing binoculars and folding chairs, all focused on the same object: the container ship Ever Forward, stranded for a month in Chesapeake Bay on the American east coast.
On this April spring morning, the curious gather in a park in the city of Pasadena, Maryland, to enjoy a privileged vantage point on the ship, stuck in nearly six meters of mud, a few hundreds of meters from the shore.
“Even with the storms we have here in the bay, we don’t have ships running aground like that,” said Frederick Schroeder, a retiree who came from east Baltimore with his camera and telephoto lens to document the scene, a “once in a lifetime” opportunity, he said.
On the night of March 13 to 14, the giant of the seas of the Taiwanese company Evergreen, 334 m long and which can carry nearly 12,000 containers, found itself immobilized in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, after having missed a turn to deeper waters.
Stretching from the state of Virginia in the south to Maryland in the north, the Chesapeake Bay is a gigantic estuary with heavy maritime traffic.
The bay thus bathes Port of Virginia and Baltimore, respectively the second and third most important ports on the East Coast of the United States.
– Dredge and tugboats –
The misadventure of the ironically named Ever Forward (“always forward”) is reminiscent of that of the Ever Given, another Evergreen container ship which was stuck across the Suez Canal in March 2021 blocking traffic for nearly a week.
The US Coast Guard has been at work trying to get the Ever Forward afloat for more than three weeks, assisted by tugs and dredge boats. Without success so far.
In recent days, cranes have been busy around the ship to relieve it of as many of its containers as possible and thus lighten it.
Asked by AFP, the coast guard said that more than 130 containers had already been unloaded but that more should be before a new attempt to refloat, the date of which remains to be determined.
“The captain who ran aground must be very embarrassed”, supposes John Zeglin, an almost octogenarian retiree, who came to see the Ever Forward “out of curiosity” with his companion from Bethesda, in the suburbs of Washington, just over one hour drive.
But if the curious gather on the shores to observe the ship, its grounding is above all a source of concern for the defenders of the environment.
– “Epicenter” of ospreys –
Doug Myers, a scientist with the environmental association Chesapeake Bay Foundation, is alarmed to AFP by a risk of rupture of the hull, which could release hundreds of liters of fuel oil.
“Every time a ship runs aground, you have this risk”, explains the expert, who says he has a lot of experience with oil spills, having worked in Texas in the 1990s in particular.
With the dredging operations, Doug Myers is also worried that the ship could list and lose containers in the bay.
“There is already damage just from the grounding of the ship in shallow water, these sandbars (…) contain clams and worms, and other very important habitats for fish”, deplores he.
Outside the water, birds are most at risk of an oil leak, at a time when migrating birds stop in the bay or even nest there for the summer.
“The bay is sort of the epicenter of osprey abundance,” says Doug Myers, who worries about these birds of prey.
The scientist regrets that so far the authorities have not taken into account the environmental risks and now wants a protective cordon to be put in place around the Ever Forward to prevent any oil leaks.
Because if according to him the danger is not “imminent”, such a leak could reach the shores on both sides of the bay in one to a few hours.
“This berry means everything to Marylanders,” says Doug Myers.
“So many people derive their income directly or indirectly from the bay, whether it’s through tourism, fishing, or having a property right on the water.”