Friday 23 May 2025 · moved the Index · spike
Container ship capsizes off Kerala coast
A container ship carrying hazardous cargo capsized and sank off the Kerala coast in the Arabian Sea around May 24–25. Spillover of toxic materials was suspected, prompting alerts in the region.
Peak 137.8 on Friday 23 May 2025. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day.
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
The #8 incident since 2020 by peak. Its peak day ranks #143 among all days — the higher days all belong to 8 bigger incidents.
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: geopolitical pawn. 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 82% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 74% negative overall; 13% 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.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Container ship capsizes off Kerala coast, peak 137.8 on 23 May 2025. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2025-container-ship-capsizes-off-kerala-coast/