By now, you’ve probably seen footage of Super Typhoon Champi churning up apocalyptically large waves along Taiwan’s coast. Well, here’s another one. A viral video has joined the spectacle: an enormous container ship rocking violently in heavy seas.
The vessel looks like a child’s toy being tossed around in a bathtub. One moment its bow rises over a swell; the next, the ocean appears to swallow much of its hull. The clip circulating on Instagram originated from a Threads account and has been associated with Champi’s destructive surf.
Check out the footage here:
The ship has been tentatively identified as the Kota Lumayan, a Singapore-flagged container vessel measuring 260.5 meters, or approximately 855 feet long.
But there’s a catch: shipping records place the Kota Lumayan in Australia during the storm. Neither the vessel’s identity nor the video’s filming date and location has been independently confirmed. So, it’s likely a different, similar ship.
That doesn’t make the spectacle any less remarkable. It does mean linking the footage directly to Champi requires further verification.
Meanwhile, the confirmed destruction in Taiwan has been extraordinary.
As SURFER previously reported, waves approximately 20 feet tall hammered Fugang Fishing Port in Taitung County on Friday, October 23, toppling a 164-foot construction crane into the ocean. Other reports described coastal waves reaching 33 feet.
Related: Super Typhoon Champi’s Monster Waves Look Almost Too Big to Be Real (Video)
“Neither passenger ferries nor cargo ships can get in or out,” ferry operator Wang Yi-kai said after the crane obstructed the harbor entrance.
Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration reported waves exceeding six meters in waters north and east of the island, even as Champi weakened from its earlier Category 5-equivalent intensity.
“The storm’s wind radius is quite large, among the bigger ones in recent years,” CWA forecaster Liu Pei-teng told Reuters.
The storm has left one person dead and 616 injured, disrupted air travel, toppled trees, and knocked out electricity to more than 340,000 households.
Whether the cargo ship video belongs to this storm remains unresolved. But the verified footage of Taiwan’s battered coastline is frightening enough on its own.
Related: Super Typhoon Champi Wave Knocks 164-Foot Crane Into Ocean in Taiwan (Video)
Original Post from this site