Fears of terrorist attacks in the high seas and busy trading ports are shaking up the world's shipping industry as the focus shifts from aviation to maritime security, analysts and officials said.
The terrifying prospect of a suicide attack, or bombs being smuggled into a US port, has prompted sweeping security measures, and maritime executives are fretting over higher costs and operational complications.
By July next year, ships and ports must comply with new security rules mandated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to prevent a seaborne equivalent of the September 2001 suicide attacks by plane hijackers in New York and Washington.
The US, the world's biggest export market, has also imposed more stringent checks on goods bound for its ports and has required vessels to give an advance manifest containing a detailed description of their cargo 24 hours before they are loaded.
American Customs officers are stationed in major ports worldwide to help pre-screen container boxes bound for the US.
For shipping firms, the costs could come from hiring and training security officers, preparing security plans and paying higher container storage fees. An estimated 43,000 ships and mobile offshore drilling units worldwide have to comply with the new rules.
Ports have to contend with costs related to the security inspection of containers, putting in place new equipment such as scanners and delays in ship departures.
"The shipping industry is not exactly the most profitable industry right now," one executive said.
And in an industry traditionally used to self-regulation, the sweeping changes could be hard to swallow.
Under the IMO rules for example, shipping lines are required to appoint a company security officer and a security officer for each ship.
A security assessment must be carried out and a security plan put on board each vessel. The ship's security system has to be audited to make sure it complies with the requirements.
"The implications of security on supply chain design can be profound," said Chelsea White, chair of transportation and logistics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US said at a conference on maritime security here last week.
"More generally, issues on security are now having significant influence on where raw materials, commodities and system components are purchased and built," White said.
US Coast Guard and Customs officials and security experts said the maritime industry remains a vulnerable target for terrorists seeking to wreak havoc of a magnitude and impact similar to the September 2001 strikes in the US.
"The consequences of a terrorist incident using a container would be profound," said US Customs Service deputy commissioner Douglas Browning.
If a weapon of mass destruction concealed in a container box was detonated at a US port, "the impact on trade and the world economy will be immediate and devastating," he said at the conference.
The US and other countries will stop unloading containers, resulting in a massive pile-up and "the net result will be complete paralysis of the global trade network," Browning said.
The US Coast Guard commandant, Admiral Thomas Collins, said: "A World Trade Center equivalent in the maritime sector would have a serious, long lasting negative impact both to our systems of trade and to our economies."
Vikram Verma, chief executive of US-based supply chain security firm Savi Technology, Inc, said sabotaging the efficient flow of goods is one of the most effective ways to cripple the US economy.
Nearly half of all incoming trade to the US arrives by ship, most of it coming by containers.
Analysts said a similar disruption could result from an attack in the busy Strait of Malacca.
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