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| Chief Officer Shen Hui (middle), pleaded guilty at Gladstone Magistrates Court to navigating a ship in a zone where a permit is required. |
A 34-YEAR-OLD chief officer onboard a bulk carrier caught travelling
off course in the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef appeared in
court today.
Foreign national Shen Hui pleaded guilty at Gladstone Magistrates Court
to navigating a ship in a zone where a permit is required.
The court heard the officers monitoring the Reef Vessel Tracking System
(VTS) detected a ship entering a restricted area of the southern part
of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) east of Gladstone.
The officers then used the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to
identify the vessel as the U-Sea Panache, a bulk coal carrier registered
in Singapore.
The court was told the passage the 225-metre vessel entered was outside
the boundary of the designated shipping area and traversed a Marine
National Park zone and a Habitat Protection zone within the GBRMP.
The vessel may only enter these zones with a permit obtained from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA).
Court proceedings revealed the offence took place between Lamont Reef and One Tree Island.
The vessel was travelling about 14 knots at the time.
The court heard the U-Sea Panache berthed at the Coal Loading facility
at Gladstone and began loading coal into the ship about 6pm on March 9.
Queensland Police Service (QPS) officers and the GBRMPA then boarded the vessel at berth in Gladstone on March 10.
The court was told an inspection of the ship’s log revealed the man was on watch and navigated the vessel from 4am to 8am.
The navigation chart also identified the track of the vessel through the restricted zones.
Proceedings revealed Gladstone Water Police then arrested and charged the man.
The court heard the man participated in an interview with the investigators.
The man said he checked the course, which the master and second officer
formulated, before to the vessel’s departure from Japan.
He also said he was not aware he had entered a no-go zone.
The court told the man had been the chief officer for the last two and a half years.
Proceedings revealed this was the man’s first voyage on the vessel and
he had not been through Great Barrier Reef waters before.
Magistrate Mark Morrow fined him $32,500.
“(He) gained no commercial advantage out of this,” he said.
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