Legal Definitions - lagan

Lagan refers to goods or cargo that have been lost or intentionally left at sea, but are marked with a buoy or similar floatation device to indicate their location and facilitate their eventual recovery.

• Example 1: During a severe storm, a cargo ship loses several large, sealed containers overboard. Before the containers sink completely, the crew manages to attach bright, GPS-enabled buoys to two of them. The ship's captain records the buoy locations, intending to dispatch a specialized salvage vessel to retrieve the valuable contents once the weather improves.

  Explanation: In this scenario, the containers are the "goods" lost at sea. They are "attached to buoys" and marked for "recovery," perfectly illustrating the concept of lagan.

• Example 2: An offshore oil rig is conducting deep-sea exploration when a critical piece of scientific monitoring equipment detaches from its tether and begins to drift towards the seabed. To prevent its permanent loss, the engineering team quickly deploys an emergency recovery system, which attaches a sonar-emitting buoy to the sinking equipment. This buoy allows them to track its precise location and plan a future underwater retrieval operation.

  Explanation: Here, the scientific monitoring equipment is the "goods" that became lost at sea. The attachment of the "sonar-emitting buoy" with the clear intent of a "future retrieval operation" makes this equipment an example of lagan.