LOS ANGELES -- The busiest U.S. seaports are also the sites of the most intense nautical security activity, but experts believe it may not be enough.

About 12,000 containers arrive daily at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach -- a volume that comprises approximately 45 percent of the nation's total inbound shipping cargo, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Yet the Coast Guard inspects only 42 vessels per week before they tie up at one of the two southern California facilities, the Times said.

In response to concerns that port security is inadequate officials maintain say they screen 100 percent of containers as part of a new "layered" system of defense that begins overseas, where foreign shippers must provide full cargo and crew manifests 24 hours before loading any ship bound for the U.S.

Officials deem about 6 percent of the containers as high risk and, therefore, scan them with X-ray devices. An additional 6 percent of the containers are then inspected by hand.

In effect, this means officials scan about 720 containers and inspect roughly 43 by hand daily.

That doesn't seem good enough to many people, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who calls America's ports "the soft underbelly of our nation's security."

Copyright 2004 by United Press International