ABOUT US

Our service was established to meet the need of shipping owners to ensure stowaway free vessels when departing from South Africa to foreign destinations. Due to the relaxation of border controls in South Africa, illegal aliens are entering our country daily in the hundreds with a significant number trying to reach foreign countries on shipping vessels. According to shipping journals, Durban is a notorious conduit for stowaway activity.

Although the ISPS code was officially implemented in all South African ports from the 1st July 2004, findings are that this has in no way curbed stowaway activity. Our statistics reveal that stowaways are in fact increasing daily and we can hence assume that this trend will continue. The fact that the number of stowaways located on vessels at sea is consistent indicates that conventional methods for preventing stowaway activity are ineffective in many instances.

It goes without saying that the risks to shipping agents/owners are significant but effectively searching and securing vessels prior to leaving for foreign ports can largely negate this problem, and this is where our service can prove invaluable.

Our utilization of purpose-trained dogs for this function has proven to be effective beyond compare, and this is verified by our unparalleled success rate to date.

We are ideally situated within 2km’s from Durban harbour and also undertake searches in Richards Bay where we have an operational base.

Gavin Mooney, who has had many years experience working with and training police dogs, personally oversees the training of dog teams. We have been in operation for nine years and have achieved an excellent success rate saving shipping owners hundreds of thousands of dollars as well as immense inconvenience by removing stowaways from their vessels in port. The principle purpose of police dogs is to locate and apprehend fugitives and hence has given us a strategic advantage in the training of dogs to search for stowaways.

Our training techniques have been specifically modified to train dogs to search and locate human cargo within a vessel such as a ship. Dogs utilised are primarily Jack Russels.

These dogs are ideal for searching areas that are impossible to access with manual searches and move easily through the restricted cavities within the vessel. This breed of dog has a high working drive and performs searches with predictable reliability.

As of November 2004 we acquired insurance to assist ship owners in recovering costs towards the repatriation of stowaways, should we fail to locate them after a specialised dog search has been performed.

The purpose of this insurance also serves to ensure that we perform a professional service as we are also subject to considerable liability should we not have a 100% success rate on any particular search.