Saturday 5 September 2020 · below the Index · spike
Cargo ship capsizes off Japan; tanker fire off Sri Lanka
A cargo ship carrying 6,000 cattle and 43 crew capsized off the coast of Japan on September 3, 2020, during Typhoon Maysak, with multiple Filipino seafarers lost and search operations suspended due to weather. Separately, an oil tanker caught fire off Sri Lanka around the same time, with ships from Sri Lanka and India attempting to douse the fire and tow the vessel to safety. Both incidents generated significant media attention focused on seafarer welfare and environmental concerns.
Peak 93.4 on Saturday 5 September 2020. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Mixed; on the peak day itself it read Social-led. When the two differ, the fast signals (social, news) spiked and faded while the slow ones (search, research) carried the tail. Mixed means no single signal dominated — the attention was spread across search, research, news and social. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 84% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Sunday 16 August 2020.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: human drama. Trade press was 6% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 77% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 70% negative overall; 12% strongly so.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- Sri Lanka tows stricken oil tanker out to sea, douses firereuters.com · 2020-09-09
- Oil Tanker on Fire Near Sri Lanka: Latest News on Ship MT New Diamondbloomberg.com · 2020-09-04
- Cargo ship carrying 43 crew and thousands of cows is missing off Japan after Typhoon Maysakwashingtonpost.com · 2020-09-03
- Typhoon Maysak: Cargo ship disappears off Japanese coastthetimes.co.uk · 2020-09-03
- Crew evacuates laden VLCC off Sri Lanka as fire eruptssplash247.com · 2020-09-03
- Laden New Shipping VLCC suffers major fire off Sri Lankatradewindsnews.com · 2020-09-03
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- Registered in a single underlying series only — one vessel-type article, news term or social query — and never moved the Index itself.
- The coverage panels count only articles matched to this incident specifically.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Cargo ship capsizes off Japan; tanker fire off Sri Lanka, peak 93.4 on 5 September 2020. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2020-cargo-ship-capsizes-off-japan-tanker-fire-off-sri-lanka/