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

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.