Transcript
Latest annual figures from the defence force relating to the period 2015 to 2016 show New Zealand defence planes spent over 200 hours scouring the vast Pacific Ocean for small fishing boats and other vessels. In those twelve months they were called on to help in fourteen search and rescues. Often boats are found and people reunited with family but not so in January when the MV Butiraoi was reported missing six days after it was due. More than eighty people died in that ferry disaster. Maritime transport specialist Julian Joy says if just one person on board had had an electronic locator beacon the disaster might not have happened.He says he always travelled with one in the region.
"Because I knew that the ships that I went on, they were out of survey, they were in quite poor condition from our standards. And I wanted to be sure that if something did go wrong at least I could set off a beacon. That's just common sense with the technology available these days."
A year after the 2009 Princess Ashika sinking in Tonga the region started up the Pacific Islands Domestic Ship Safety Programme. An expert in maritime safety from the Pacific Community Omirete Tabureka says the system helps ensure a ship has all the necessary safety tools.
"Radio, safety, life-jackets, boats, life-bouys... whatever is required to be carried on that type of ship. These will be reflected in the safety manual: the policy, all the procedures, what equipment they should have on board the ship. This safety manual will be reviewed by the maritime administration."
But the system is apparently not fail-safe. Mr Tabureka says the MV Butiraoi was last inspected in 2010 and was due for a safety audit last year.
"All I know is that they don't have the SOP, the Safe Operational Plan, because we were supposed to audit that ship also last year but we couldn't because they hadn't implemented the SOP. That's all I know, I don't know about what happened next."
The Butiraoi sinking is the second major ferry disaster in the region since the safety programme began. PNG's Rabaul Queen sank in 2012 leaving an estimated 165 dead. While it had a satellite tracking system, its crew members were later found to be unqualified. New Zealand's Pacific Maritime Safety Programme is among further initiatives to improve safety. The New Zealand Aid Programme's David Weinstein says a lot is being done.
"While we got off to a slow start, it was hard to get good engagement but now I think we are making real progress. Both with the regulators but also with the communities and the fishermen that we're working with."
Mr Weinstein says different agencies and governments are working to agree a set of standards to adopt across the region but he says a change of culture is also needed. He says New Zealand's equipping Pacific fishers with electronic locator beacons and it's currently wrapping up a trial in Niue and Kiribati.
"They will be made available in those countries. The fishermen will make a part payment and the rest of it will be subsidised. They will be registered in-country and then we will be able to track so that when the batteries run out that they can be re-issued."
Mr Weinstein says the beacons could drastically reduce the need for deploying expensive aerial searches. But a maritime researcher in the Pacific Peter Nuttall says there would be less need for an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff if systemic issues were addressed. He says aid partners should direct renewable energy funding towards sustainable marine transport in the Pacific where expensive fuel costs often lead to shortcuts in safety.
"It wouldn't be actually all that expensive to provide new shipping across the Pacific that was highly fuel efficient, much better quality. That wouldn't be that difficult to do. But that requires a policy change not in the islands but within the development agencies and the bilateral partners, New Zealand and Australia included."
New Zealand's locator beacon programme is next to be rolled out in the Cook Islands, Tokelau, Tonga and Tuvalu.
