... Seriously - beats me how they managed it. Every I take the Four Sisters on a ferry we get searched. Had sniffer dogs this year! ...
Tony,
I am pretty sure one cannot train sniffer dogs to sniff for any unspecific humans, because they would end up barking mad, that smell is everywhere.
Obviously dogs can sniff for unusual specific smells like explosives or drugs or -maybe- traces of adrenaline. So I would assume people to be smuggled professionally would be sedated in order not to emit adrenaline during a search. That urine we found could be a hint to that also.
Then, your boat is a cabin boat which obviously can conceal a person inside. So professional traffickers will rather use containers that are fairly unsuspicious of that, like small open boats. In addition, new GRP boats have a strong smell which may be helpful to cover up other smells.
Then, the numbers are so huge. I think I remember there are in average 10,000 units in every 24 hours going through Dover Ferryport -alone, not counting the Tunnel-, of which 4,000 are buses, lorries and unaccompanied trailers. Lorries and trailers are usually tightly packed and so are quite well protected from inspections, it would take clearly too long to unpack and re-pack to inspect each and every one properly. The probability to be detected is fairly minute.
I heard the going rate for a smuggle is GBP 5,000.00 apiece. Even if you professionally smuggle just around 100 persons per day, the total turnover per single week would be around 3.5 million, meaning there should be plenty money available for bribery in the right places. Just a thought of course, but it has happened before.
So Matt Damon, you think? For which role BTW? : Lorry driver, stowaway, detective, mastermind? Fascinating!
Kind regards.
