The shipping industry is suffering its worst year since the 2008 crash, thanks to the worldwide economic slump.  Not only are orders for new container ships down, but companies are getting rid of the oldest members of their fleets at a near record pace.

About a thousand ships will be dragged ashore, cut up, and sold for scrap this year, taking 52 million metric tons of hauling capacity off of the waves.  This is second only to 2012, when a record 61 million metric dead-weight tons was scrapped.  And even so, shipping titans like Maersk, Cosco, and Hapag-Lloyd AG are competing for a shrinking global shipping market - the boats have 30 percent more capacity in the water than cargo.

"Given the tremendous overcapacity, it will take much more recycling and at least two to three years of no growth in capacity to see some balance between supply and demand," Basil Karatzas of the New York-based Karatzas Marine Advisors Co. told the Wall Street Journal.

But it's not just the rate at which shippers are getting rid of ships - it's the age of the ships, too.  Vessels used to have a service life of about 30 years; but this year the average age of ships getting scrapped is about 15 years.

"Freight rates are dismal," said Anil Sharma, whose company Global Marketing Systems is the world's largest cash buyer of ships for recycling.  "So you either idle ships, if you can afford it - or recycle."

Owners are buying fewer ships.  In the first half of this decade, they ordered an average of 1,450 ships annually.  But according to the UK-based marine data firm Vessels Value, this year's orders for new ships through July has been only 293 vessels.