Take a look at the record-breaking port congestion from 10,000 feet above, as 70 hulking cargo ships park off the LA coast

September 22, 2021

• Every day last week key ports in Southern California hit a new record backlog of cargo ships.
• An aerial view shows how the coast has turned into a parking lot for container ships.
• Prior to the pandemic, the ports typically had zero to one ships waiting to dock and unload.

• From above they may look like colorful specks in the distance, but the cargo ships floating off the coast of Southern California represent a massive bottle neck for the global supply chain.
• On Monday, 97 hulking cargo ships were at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. At the time, 70 of the container ships were at anchor or in drift areas waiting for space to open up in the port, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.
• On Sunday, when Sam Kirschner snapped a photo from his plane window — over 10,000 feet above the shore — the Southern California ports had just finished a week where they had hit a new ship-backlog record every day, as the queue lengthened by 10 ships.
• From above they may look like colorful specks in the distance, but the cargo ships floating off the coast of Southern California represent a massive bottle neck for the global supply chain.
• On Monday, 97 hulking cargo ships were at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. At the time, 70 of the container ships were at anchor or in drift areas waiting for space to open up in the port, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.
• On Sunday, when Sam Kirschner snapped a photo from his plane window — over 10,000 feet above the shore — the Southern California ports had just finished a week where they had hit a new ship-backlog record every day, as the queue lengthened by 10 ships.

“Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago,” Louttit told Insider. “They take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, more warehouses to put the cargo.”

The massive backlog has become a spectacle of sorts in California. Insider’s Brittany Chang captured images of the port congestion in April, when 21 boats waited to dock.

At the time, the cargo boats were readily visible from the shore.

In April, the backlog was already wreaking havoc on the global supply chain, but it was nowhere near the levels of congestion the port is seeing today. 

Earlier this year, the backlog showed signs of abating, after hitting a record high in February of 2020, when the onset of the pandemic and panic-buying wreaked havoc on global supply chains. But, last month the ports began to beat out February’s record, as COVID-19 shutdowns and a labor shortage met a boom in demand from shopping for remote work to preparing for the holiday shopping season.