Our keynote film for the 2017 Maritime Media Awards was ‘Seaguard’. It looked at the (non) preparations by government to deal with the likelihood of increasing illegal migration cross-Channel. The film (go https://www.maritimefilmsuk.tv/films/seaguard/ ) begins with a fictionalization of a mass assault on our shores by people traffickers using large RIBS – brilliantly realized by artist Caroline Misselbrook and MFUK’s video editor and producer Andy Jones. (Traffickers plan mass assaults like that to swamp coastal authorities and enable other smuggling too.) The film went on to show how few sea-going cutters were actually available to police our coasts (3, then. Italy, for example has 600, Greece 240 – even Croatia has 9 vessels available.) Now, what we imagined is happening – see headlines like the one above – and looks set to increase. Are we prepared? Don’t bet on it.