Tons of Rena debris still need to be removed from wreckage site

MORE than 50 tonnes of container wreckage has so far been removed from the seabed around the Rena wreck in New Zealand.

A total of 955 containers have been recovered, and 66 more remain in identified locations but are yet to be recovered. A barge and crane have been used to collect the container scrap and debris from inside the exclusion zone. Some pieces of wreckage were as large as a hatch cover, according to the Bay of Plenty Times.

The Rena hit the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga last October causing an environmental disaster.

Braemar Howells operations manager Neil Lloyd said scrap was brought in by the barge-load. "This is the end point to a huge amount of painstaking preparation, involving divers, engineering work around the lifting, and the pre-rigging of scrap. We are making every effort to push on with this work into the weekend, before a forecast deterioration in the weather."

The tender process for the next stage of salvage work - wreck removal - is continuing.

Wreckage retrieval is continuing further away from Rena, at depths of up to 70 or 80 metres. A remotely operated underwater vehicle with robot arms was being used to pre-rig identified container scrap.

On land, clean-up teams continue to focus on Matakana Island, the Coromandel and areas further down the East Coast. Debris gathered over recent days is mainly plywood and refrigerated container foam.