MARINE officials are to closely monitor traffic through Mirs Bay over the next few months to see whether extra patrol launches are needed to deal with a new container port in Shenzhen.
Marine North Police Assistant Divisional Commander (Operations), Chief Inspector Frankie Poon Tze-chung, said his division was concerned that the new Yantian container port would lead to a heavy increase in the number of large ships passing through the eastern waters.
''Certainly the opening of the Yantian container port will increase the traffic of large vessels so we've got to watch things more closely,'' Mr Poon said.
''But we really have no idea what to expect. I can't say it is going to be more dangerous but this increase of sea traffic may come as a surprise to the fishing folk in the area. Who knows?'' Yesterday morning, two Marine Police launches monitored the progress of the first container ship, Maersk Algeciras, as it sailed from Kwai Chung, south of Hong Kong Island and up through Mirs Bay towards the Chinese port.
The launches then followed the ship back to Hong Kong in the afternoon, before it was to head to Singapore, on to Colombo and then to Europe.
The Danish-owned Algeciras, at 70 metres and 40,000 tonnes, was the first of Maersk Line's vessels to begin a direct weekly service between China and Europe by a non-Chinese shipping company.
Only Maersk has so far signed up to use the Yantian container port. It will operate the European service and another to the United States, also once a week.
