Cargo ships waiting off Southern California pushed farther due to U.S. Navy exercises: report

Cargo ships waiting to unload in ports of Southern California had been pushed farther away from the shore as the U.S. Navy launched training exercises along the coast, the Washington Examiner reported Thursday.

Kipling Louttit, Executive Director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which coordinates shipping traffic and piloting vessels into the ports, was quoted as saying that only cargo ships cleared to dock within 72 hours were permitted within 50 miles since “the military is shooting missiles and guns six days a week.”

“We needed to spread the ships out, so we had to skip over the area. We now have them 150 miles offshore of Southern California. They are waiting along the Mexican coast and as far away as the Panama Canal,” Louttit said.

According to the report, Louttit provided a map of incoming ships with a huge cluster off the coast of Mexico, adding crews aboard ships waiting to be called into shore must agree not to disembark in foreign countries or they lose their place in line.

The Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB) together form the fifth busiest port facility in the world and the busiest in the Americas.

POLA processed about 10.7 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in 2021, breaking its previous calendar year record by 13 percent and setting a new record in the Western Hemisphere. POLB reported that the calendar year 2021 volume of 9,384,368 TEUs went up 15.7 percent over the previous year, setting a new annual record as well.

The busy twin ports are struggling with indigestion problem after the number of ships anchored offshore swelled last fall to more than 100. As of Wednesday, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, 88 ships were in the two ports, including 32 at anchor or loitering and 56 at berths.

The Washington Examiner said in its report that the Navy owns two islands off the Southern California coast, which are used as training facilities for airstrikes and amphibious assaults, including San Clemente Island, 68 miles from San Diego, and San Nicolas Island, 65 miles from the Point Mugu Naval Air Station in Ventura County, north of Los Angeles.

San Clemente Island is more open to marine traffic, so the Navy regularly notifies the Coast Guard of missile launches to make sure no ships stray into the area during that time, the report said.
Source: Xinhua