The giant container ship that made headlines around the world after becoming stuck in the Suez Canal has finally been dislodged from the shoreline.
The Ever Given, operated by the Taiwanese company Evergreen Marine, became stuck in the Egypitan waterway on Tuesday, March 23, blocking one of the world's most vital shipping routes.
But now, as reported by BBC News, thanks to a near-week-long mission to free the giant container ship, the Suez Canal Authority has said that the Ever Given has been corrected by 80%. Additionally, efforts to refloat the ship have already started.
The stern of the Ever Given is now 102 meters off the shore thanks to efforts from rescue workers from local authorities and the Dutch company Smit Salvage, Reuters reported.
Further efforts to fully correct the ship will be made later today (Monday, March 29) at 11:30AM local time (09:30AM GMT) once the tide rises, officials said.
As of this writing, 367 vessels are waiting to pass through the Suez Canal, with traffic said to be resuming once the Ever Given has been moved to a waiting area in a wider section of the canal, BBC reports.
Per BBC News, the Ever Given is 400 meters in length - taller than the Empire State Building - and a ship of its size can carry as many as 20,000 twenty-foot containers.
Despite the calamity bringing a chuckle to much of the world, for the shipping industry, the blockage caused a crisis, with Insider reporting that some shipping firms were beginning to divert vessels bound for Suez around Africa instead - adding thousands of miles to their journey, days in delays, and huge added expenses to their voyages.
Sailing under a Panamanian flag, the Ever Given was headed for Rotterdam, Netherlands, from the Yantian district of China, per the ship-tracking site Vessel Finder.
After initially becoming stuck, social media users were quick to get a few laughs out of the unfortunate traced by its path:
After running aground on the canal's banks at 7:40AM local time on Tuesday, the 200-foot-wide and 1300-foot-long vessel blocked the entire width of the channel.
Since becoming lodged, it is still unclear as to why the ship ran aground, with everything from high winds to power failures to "human error" all being reported.
Over the course of the following days, Egyptian authorities attempted to simultaneously dig the ship out of the shore, as well as use tugboats to tow the Ever Given back into position.
The incident quickly spurred an onslaught of memes on social media, as the rest of the world made light of the situation:
CNBC later reported that the shipping data and news company Lloyd’s List had estimated that the blockage was holding up $400 million an hour in trade (based on the approximate value of goods that are moved through the Suez Canal every day.)
