6 sealift containers from 2023 Iqaluit spill still underwater

Six shipping containers that fell into the water near Iqaluit close to two years ago are still submerged and will be recovered in the coming months, says the head of a sealift company.

NEAS CEO Daniel Dagenais says his company will resume efforts next month to locate and recover six sealift containers that have been underwater since Oct. 27, 2023. (File photo by Jeff Pelletier)

The sea cans were among 23 that spilled over in an Oct. 27, 2023, incident as a NEAS sealift ship was unloading freight onto a barge in Frobisher Bay.

One NEAS worker was injured, but has since recovered.

“In August, we’ll have a boat out there doing the survey and the final localization of the containers so that we can physically confirm the presence,” said Daniel Dagenais, CEO of NEAS, in an interview.

“We’ll bring in divers and we will just attach our barge and lifting equipment to the containers, and then lift them out.”

NEAS attempted to recover the containers in the immediate follow-up to the spill. However, it was unable to recover seven of them, and the cans spent the winter underwater.

Last year, NEAS hired an Iqaluit company to survey the ocean floor to find the seven missing containers.

They were only able to recover one. Dagenais said the others were “not exactly” where the company was “expecting them to be.”

This time, NEAS is bringing in Quebec company Urgence Portuaire (Port Emergency in English) to conduct a new survey of the bay with hopes to bring the remaining six containers to the surface.

“We need to remove them because they are naturally not supposed to be in water, in there in the bay,” Dagenais said.

The containers — which he estimates sit at a depth of around 33 metres — hold beer, food, porcelain toilets, floorboards and construction materials.

There are also some “non-regulated” chemical compounds in the containers. Dagenais said data sheets he has for them don’t “show any specific toxicity level that is of concern.”

He said the sea containers themselves stand up well to the elements. The one they recovered last year was still sealed.

“These containers are designed to withstand a long period of immersion,” he said.

“They’re not rotting away.”

Dagenais thanked the Iqaluit community for coming to NEAS’s aid in the aftermath of the incident. Efforts by rescuers and first responders assured the NEAS employee who was hurt didn’t suffer permanent injuries, he said.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating the incident, which it describes as a “class 3″ occurrence. According to its website, that means a small number of safety issues are examined, possibly resulting in the safety board releasing recommendations for change.

For this type of incident, the board says it aims to release reports within 450 days — a timeline it has missed.

“These timelines may be exceeded due to the complexity of the investigation, delays that may be encountered during the various related activities, and delays that may arise due to the need for investigative resources to support new reported occurrences and investigations,” said Hugo Fontaine, a safety board spokesperson, in an email.