"Container Port Operations" as a legal term does not make much sense. A port is usually a collection of terninals. Check World Bank Port Reform Toolkit.

Two zones, three actors. (sender-transport-reciber) with all posibilys of combinations 3x3x3 under two legal acepcion of international or not consigned for authority , and nacionality to ready for resend or delevary.

The definition for container terminal operation can be precise as it is purely dealing with handling containers in a dedicated berth. "A process of handling containers from and to a vessel using dedicated infrastructure and superstructure in a seaport " ; on the contrary container port operation is a broad term which describe everything happening a in a container port, container handling, terminal management, yard planing, traffic planing, and even all the marine services offered to vessels includes. So no definition can be drawn. I suggest keep it as a describing term of container operation in a seaport.

Thank you for all your comments, I think I understand what all of you are saying.

In my humble opinion, my criteria is also same to the above mentioned, for the people that are working together with the container terminal, we ussualy use "Container Terminal", to define the "Specialized terminal only for containers operations" (understood by the interphase between differnets way of transport for containers). Sometimes, even being less used in Europe, we can find some multi-proposal terminals, that also works with container operation, for sure in almost all case the value of the intermodality it's really appreciated; so, the tems container's terminal, is just for this kind of specialized yards, and for the other , i'm also agree to talk about "Container operation in a Seaport".

Container port and container terminal have the same meaning of operations.but the different is that the container port is specialty for containers only but container terminal can be a part of the multipurpose port.

There may be interactions among different container terminals within one port. One example is inter-terminal transportation (ITT). We have a model on this:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259187387_A_mathematical_model_of_inter-terminal_transportation/file/9c96052a43707de713.pdf?origin=publication_detail

I shall post a question on this to see what the specific approaches to deal with ITT are in different ports.

Article A mathematical model of inter-terminal transportation

In simple words, Container Terminal is a piece of land within a port with a specific infrastructure to handle containers.

The term "handle" in the above definition refers to operations, which means activities within the terminal, such as loading/unloading containers, yard management, container movement planning and traffic management/planning.

To my knowledge - The Container Terminal is the section of the port (In the most ports taking the majority of the land space) were containers are stored, imported and exported. Wheres as Container Port Operations consists of all the Primary, Secondary and tertiary tasks which are required in the handling of containers. For example, Removal of container to the quay, to the storage yard, inspection and storage. Hope this helps!