yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Patrolling the Bay on the New Hawk Five | To Catch a Smuggler: South Pacific | National Geographic


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Summer in the Bay of Islands sees many yachts visiting from overseas, so Customs have their work cut out for them keeping the country’s coastal border safe. Today they’re patrolling on the new Hawk Five. It’s a serious vessel, loaded with tech, and can travel at very high speeds.

So on an average year, there’s somewhere north of 5-600 yachts and various other craft which head down to this part of the world. So part of our role is to go out and make sure that those craft that are coming this way are compliant. With the speed and the capability of the boat, we do have now the ability to react pretty sharpish.

Before long, supervising Customs Officer Nick and his crew get a heads up from Coastguard that a catamaran may have tried to sail into New Zealand waters under the radar. So there’s a vessel down in the Great Mercs which we’ve been tasked to go and take a look at. Got some concerns around the persons on board and why they’re here in New Zealand, and how they got here.

So probably about, ooh, five hours away from there at the moment, maybe a bit less. The Coast Guard have advised Nick the catamaran has a torn sail and limited power. So there won't be any kind of chase going on this afternoon. Last night the sailors on the vessel radioed Coastguard for a tow to shore.

Due to rough conditions, it didn’t happen because authorities couldn’t board safely to search it. Customs on board the Hawk Five plan to do the search now, and for good reason. Yeah, Czech nationals. So one motor, 50% one motor out. Catamarans in the past have been used for large-scale drug importations around the Pacific region.

The vessel that we’re going to now is a catamaran by all accounts. We want to go and see who they are, why they’re here, and what their intentions are. Make sure that they’re not smuggling drugs or attempting to smuggle people or something to that effect into the country.

Back at Auckland International Mail Center, it's another hectic day for staff, checking the 18,000 parcels and letters that arrive daily. Customs Officer Phil has pulled aside a gift declared as cotton sheets originating from Malaysia. Just a little bit of shading through here. It’s not overly convincing; it could just be cardboard, but we’ll open it up and see what we’ve got.

Inconsistencies are a red flag to Phil, so he’s onto this box like a ton of bricks. I’ve just noticed something on the box there: “We deliver packages of happiness.” Whatever that is, so we’ll open it up and see what happiness is today. Pretty roughly packaged. They say happiness can be found in crisp new sheets.

It is taped here, which could be something a little unusual. There’s this tape on here; I don’t know whether that would be packaged like that normally. But these sheets don’t make Phil very happy at all. It just looks like a perfectly standard piece of cardboard.

What I do notice actually about that is it’s a bit heavy, so we’ll chuck it on the scales. 252 grams. That is about heavy, I would say, for cardboard. Years of experience have taught Phil heavy cardboard spells trouble. Looks to be something in there. Looks like the packaging buried within the layers of cardboard.

And if that's a drug concealment, it's a pretty good one.

More Articles

View All
Finding an in-between frame of reference | Special relativity | Physics | Khan Academy
Let’s say I’m person A here in my ship, traveling through the universe at a constant velocity. So that is person A right over there. Let me write it a little bit bigger: person A. And let’s say that I have a friend, person B, and they are in another ship…
Calculating t statistic for slope of regression line | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
[Instructor] Jian obtained a random sample of data on how long it took each of 24 students to complete a timed reaction game and a timed memory game. He noticed a positive linear relationship between the times on each task. Here is a computer output on th…
What is a Leap Year?
A calendar year is made of three hundred and sixty-five days – a number that refuses to be divided nicely, which is why we end up with uneven months of either 30 or 31 days. Except for February – the runt of the litter – which only gets 28… except when it…
Akashinga: The Brave Ones | National Geographic
So foreign, today we are expecting 500 results that are coming in from 500. He wants 822 graduates. This training is going to be hard, but I know these ladies. They are strong ladies. As we are coming here, everyone—we know we are coming here for training…
Quit Seeking APPROVAL Like a Loser (Stoic SELF-RESPECT) | STOICISM
How often have you felt like you were going through the motions, living your life based on the expectations of others, like you’re an actor continuously seeking approval and validation from an invisible audience? If so, you’re not alone. Like you, million…
Sampling distribution of the difference in sample proportions | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
We’re told suppose that eight percent of all cars produced at plant A have a certain defect and six percent of all cars produced at plant B have this defect. Each month, a quality control manager takes separate random samples of 200 of the over 3000 cars …