Ships sailed smoothly into ports across Asia on Thursday when a tough new maritime security law came into effect, with the region's governments choosing to avoid possible delays to vital sea-borne trade in the event of non-compliance.
Most of Asia's major shipping lines and key container ports had met a United Nation's imposed July 1 deadline to implement the new anti-terrorist measures, and authorities appeared willing to overlook vessels arriving from non-compliant ports.
Only about half the world's ports and 53 percent of the global shipping had complied with the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code (ISPS) on the eve of the deadline, according to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
Failure to comply with the new code could have meant a time-consuming inspection by port authorities or, in an extreme case, a ship being ordered back to sea.
"We have received 20 reports from ports around the Asia-Pacific region and no delays or detentions have been reported at this moment," said Mitsutoyo Okada, deputy secretary at the Tokyo MOU Secretariat, an umbrella body for port control in Asia-Pacific.
The ISPS code, signed by 147 governments, requires port operators, stevedoring companies and owners of ships larger than 500 tons to draw up plans for responding to a terrorist threat, implement tighter security around facilities and train staff.
In Singapore, which operates the world's largest transhipment hub, all 41 ships which visited the port by 0200 GMT on Thursday produced compliance documents with the ISPS code.