Ship crew errors lead to New Zealand environmental disaster

A series of failures by the crew led to Liberian-flagged container ship the Rena grounding in October, 2011, which caused the New Zealand's worst-ever maritime environmental disaster, according to an official investigation report out Thursday.

The Rena spilled hundreds of tons of oil and other contaminants into the sea along with cargo containers and their contents, killing an unknown number of New Zealand's native birds after it hit the Astrolabe Reef off the east of the North Island and broke in two.

New Zealand's Transport Accident Investigation Commission concluded that the Rena grounding was not in any way attributable to the malfunction of any on-board machinery or equipment, including on-board navigational equipment.

The commission's report said that the crew wasn't following procedures for monitoring the progress of the ship and didn't comply with safety standard of watchkeeping.

The report said the ship's second mate was on watch when the ship was approaching the port of Tauranga after midnight on Oct. 4, 2011, and he adjusted the ship's course to make a shortcut and inadvertently put the ship on a direct course for the reef.

When the master arrived on the bridge to assume control, he " received virtually no information on where the ship was, where it was heading, and what immediate dangers to navigation he needed to consider," said the report.

In October 2012, the Greek shipping company, Daina Shipping Co., which owned the Rena was fined 300,000 NZ dollars (232,378 U.S. dollars) in a New Zealand court after admitting responsibility for the illegal discharge of contaminants into the sea.

Earlier, the government announced it had reached a settlement worth 27.6 million NZ dollars (21.38 million U.S. dollars) with Daina in relation to the grounding.

That conviction came five months after the Rena's Filipino master and second officer were both jailed for seven months following prosecutions as a result of the grounding, before being deported to the Philippines.

The report said ship management firm CIEL Shipmanagement S.A. had failed to fix "a high number of deficiencies" identified in overseas port inspections about three months prior to the grounding.

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