Port's bio-security boost for cruise season

A cruise ship, the Crown Odyssey, docked at Napier Port in 2001. New security steps are now being put in place as cruise passenger numbers hit new levels, and heighten the risk of passengers being joined in their disembarkation by unwanted risks to the Hawke's Bay fruit industry.

Extra security steps are being introduced to regional ports to stop fruit flies and other fruit industry risks disembarking with thousands of other passengers as the cruise line industry booms over the summer.

While it will target first port of entry, significant numbers of food or other risk interventions will lead to the Ministry of Primary Industry considering greater intervention at subsequent ports.

Hundreds of items are seized from passengers as they disembark each summer, with about 75 per cent described as "fruit fly host materials."

Portable x-ray technology will be used in the latest step to be taken to combat the problem, with worries raised also by several incidents where fruit flies have been discovered further north.

The move was announced yesterday by Ministry of Primary Industries Head of Intelligence and Operations Stephanie Rowe, with expectations that cruise ship passengers will increase by a third this summer, with almost 270,000 expected to land at ports throughout the country - most hitting town for just a few hours.

Ms Rowe said the numbers of passengers and the "enhanced" fruit fly threat across the Tasman and other parts of the Pacific, had brought MPI and the cruise industry together to improve biosecurity.

She said more biosecurity detector dog teams will be available this season to screen disembarking passengers for food and plants, and MPI will also introduce a portable x-ray machine at North Island ports to scan hand luggage coming off ships.

Last year the dogs were introduced to screen passengers at the regional ports and more will be available this summer.

"We've done a lot of work with the cruise ship industry to identify which vessels we want to target, based on their history, where they are coming from and who the passengers are."

One of the areas of focus will be working with cruise ship companies to ensure vessels carry stores that don't pose biosecurity risk, Ms Rowe said. "Fruit fly host items like apples and bananas account for more than 75 per cent of the biosecurity risk items our officers seize from cruise ship passengers coming ashore.

"If we know this food doesn't pose any biosecurity risk because it has been sourced from New Zealand or from a reputable supplier, we can actually reduce the amount of intervention by our quarantine officers.

"The other area is biosecurity awareness. We know, for example, that an announcement by the vessel's captain before passengers leave the ship is very effective at stopping food items coming ashore.

"We're talking with operators about what they can do and how we can help them to get our biosecurity messages across to passengers."

MPI says it gets good co-operation from cruise operators, with a vested interest in looking after New Zealand as tourism destination.

An MPI survey from October last year to May this year found fruit fly host materials (510) amounted to 75 per cent of items seized from passengers. Passengers arriving from Tonga, French Polynesia, Vanuatu and Australia, had the highest average number of seizures per vessel, and liners for which the last port of departure was the Pacific Islands had 27 per cent higher seizures than those with Australia as the last port of departure.

Napier did not figure as a significant risk port, the highest rates of seizure being in Auckland (262), Dunedin (143) and Wellington (90).