Simple question Maersk – were the navigation systems on or off?

The Mari­time Uni­on says it is not sat­is­fied with the response from ship­ping com­pany Maersk over its nav­ig­a­tion sys­tems on two ships last week, and will be lay­ing a com­plaint with Mari­time NZ.

Yes­ter­day, the Mari­time Uni­on released cor­res­pond­ence between a ship spot­ter at Ports of Auck­land and Mari­time New Zea­l­and, indic­at­ing Maersk had interfered with the nav­ig­a­tion sys­tems of two ships enter­ing Auck­land last week.

Joe Fleet­wood, Mari­time Uni­on Gen­er­al Sec­ret­ary, said that the response the Port work­er received from Mari­time NZ when it was raised on March 2 reads (emphas­is added):

“Sub­sequent to your query regard­ing the cap­tioned mat­ter, we have raised con­cern to the oper­at­or of both ves­sels. The oper­at­or con­firms that the AIS sys­tem on both ves­sels is in good work­ing order. The mas­ters are now aware of this issue and have put the AIS sys­tem back into ser­vice.”

“The Mari­time NZ response to the Port work­er makes it abso­lutely clear that the AIS sys­tems were in good work­ing order, but had to be put ‘back into ser­vice’.”

“Maersk also con­firmed yes­ter­day that their AIS nav­ig­a­tion sys­tems were fully func­tion­al.”

“Giv­en this, for their ships not to turn up for sev­er­al hours in the AIS nav­ig­a­tion­al track­ing, says to us that they were delib­er­ately turned off.”

“We await a response from Maersk that prop­erly accounts for these dis­crep­an­cies,” Joe Fleet­wood said.

“In the mean­time, it is our view that Mari­time New Zea­l­and needs to com­mence a detailed invest­ig­a­tion to get to the bot­tom of this.”