Southern California ports moving toward record vessel counts

Southern California ports moving toward record vessel counts    The Marine Exchange of Southern California reported late Tuesday that the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are flowing smoothly despite a rise in the average number of vessel arrivals so far this year.
   'We had a record count for ship arrivals in April — about 530 vessels called at L.A.-Long Beach Harbor — with over half of them being containerships,' Marine Exchange Executive Director Manny Aschemeyer wrote in an e-mail update. 'Last year, our average ship arrivals were running about 13 to 14 per day. This past month we've seen the daily arrivals jump to 17. Wednesday, we're expecting 22! And we've had several days in recent weeks with 25 ships arriving.'
   Aschemeyer said that not only are predictions of 8,000-TEU containerships replacing smaller vessels coming true, but some carriers are simply adding the larger ships into their strings without phasing out the smaller ships.
   'In any event, the containership counts are definitely up from last year, and appear to be climbing — not just in arrival numbers, but also in TEU capacity,' he wrote. 'We could very well be looking at a record-breaking year on all levels.'