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Rena

Spills > Rena >

The incident

In the early hours of the morning on 5 October 2011 (GMT), the Liberian-flagged container ship Rena, with a capacity of 3,500 TEU (47,230 DWT), grounded north of New Zealand, some twenty kilometres off the coast of Tauranga (specialised in wood export) with 1,368 containers onboard.

Since then, the vessel has been sitting on the Astrolabe Reef, an environment renowned for its flora and fauna (many colonies of dolphins, whales, seals and penguins).

To respond to the spill, shoreline and at sea response was placed under the authority of Maritime New Zealand.

As it happened, on 28 October, in the same region, a second grounding, thankfully without any major consequences, occurred. It involved the container ship Schelde Trader, which grounded at the entrance to Tauranga, shortly after leaving the port. No pollution was reported.

Location of the Rena

Nature of the cargo

The risk of pollution was generated both by the bunker fuel and the cargo within the containers.

The 1,700 tonnes of oil (heavy fuel oil and engine oil) were on board at the time of the incident and were at risk of being released into the Bay of Plenty, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.
The container ship Rena was carrying 1,368 containers, including 11 containing hazardous substances and 121 containing perishable foodstuffs.

Maritime New Zealand reported that 88 containers had fallen overboard (75 forty-foot and 13 twenty-foot) during a storm that swept through the area 5 days after the incident.

Container washed up on Motiti Island, Bay of Plenty
© Maritime New Zealand

53 of these lost containers were identified: one of them contained hazardous substances (including alkyl sulfonic acid, UN 2586). 23 containers washed up on the shore. The search for missing containers is still underway.

Potentially hazardous substances transported
Name	UN number
Ferrosilicon	1408
Alkyl sulfonic acid	2586
Hydrogen peroxide	2015 2014 2984
Potassium nitrate	1468
Trichloroisocyanuric acid	2468

Response operations at sea

On 6 October, the first slicks were observed. The port side tank was pierced and pollutant was leaking out. The company Svitzer was contracted to conduct wreck treatment operations.

Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) declared the accident a Tier 3 emergency, the highest level of pollution risk. An Incident Coordination Centre (ICC), composed of 200 people, was set up in Tauranga.

Offers of national and international assistance came flooding in, with experts arriving from the UK, Australia and Singapore from 8 October to provide technical advice.

New Zealand Defence Force personnel and vessels arrived on site on 9 October 2011 to back up Maritime New Zealand teams.

Pollutant recovery operations began at sea on 9 October, but proved to be of limited efficiency. The pollutant (IFO 350) rapidly became very viscous, due to the temperature conditions on site.

On 10 October, New Zealand’s Prime Minister took part in an overflight and declared that the reason for the grounding was unknown, given the calm weather conditions at the time of the accident. The same day, the Rena began to list to starboard (22°) due to adverse weather conditions.

The Rena’s captain was arrested on 12th, and his second officer the following day, charged with “operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk”.

The Rena grounded off the coast of New Zealand © Cedre
The Rena grounded off the coast of New Zealand © Cedre

The day after the incident, dispersant spraying operations began on a 5 km-long oil slick, around the ship. However, these dispersants proved to be inefficient on this pollutant. Meanwhile, stocks of booms and other equipment arrived on site to be deployed so as to protect sensitive sites.

Oil pumping and container recovery operations

Onboard the vessel, salvage teams in charge of pumping the fuel out of the vessel’s tanks had to inject water and use booster pumps to remove the viscous fuel oil. The recovered fuel was transferred to a barge located 100 metres from the Rena.

On 13 November 2011, oil pumping operations were completed, with a total of 319 tonnes collected. Only 60 tonnes remained in the number 5 starboard tank, which will be pumped out during the container removal phase.

A crane lifts off the first container - © Maritime New Zealand

The second response phase began on 16 November with the removal of the first container from the rear deck using the crane barge Sea Tow 60. This proved to be a very tricky operation. Experts estimated that 6 containers could be removed per day. If 1,280 containers remain onboard, this means that the operation should take over 7 months. The containers have been equipped with locater beacons (called ‘pingers’) so that they can be easily detected if they fall overboard.

Wreck management

Meanwhile, a salvage plan was prepared by Svitzer's Dutch naval architects, based on the ship’s resistance calculations. Motion sensors have been fitted to the vessel to monitor its stability and measure hull movements.

On 10 October, a storm made response operations very difficult and caused a large crack to form on the port side of the vessel. The hull was at risk of breaking in two. The vessel was listing heavily (22° starboard list), and the crew were evacuated.

Several weeks later, due to adverse weather conditions on site, the Rena cracked and partially broke in two on 1st January 2012. Initially, the two parts appeared to still be joined at the bottom of the hull. Sensors were rapidly installed to check the vessel’s structural stability. The wreck’s situation remained stable for a week, during which container removal operations continued.

Finally, the Rena broke completely in two on 8 January. The bow section remained grounded while the stern broke away and drifted about 30 metres before finally sinking.
300 of the 800 containers remaining onboard at the time were lost into the sea. They contained, among other things, powdered milk and timber.

A 3 nautical mile exclusion zone is in place around the wreck due to the high collision risk caused by the presence of containers and debris at sea.

The oil pollution risk remains present (around 350 tonnes of fuel oil are believed to remain in the Rena’s bunkers), and a new aerial surveillance campaign was set up.

Meanwhile, containers and debris began to wash up on the beaches of the Bay of Plenty. Collection and clean-up operations are in progress.

Response operations on land

From 7 October, clean-up and wildlife rescue teams conducted shoreline assessments to determine the sites to be protected, identify priority areas for clean-up in the event of pollutant arrivals and define the techniques to be used. Booms were deployed to protect sensitive shoreline areas.

Following the storm on 10 October, the first arrivals of oil were discovered on Mt Maunganui beach. Clean-up teams immediately took action. On land, beaches were closed from Mt Maunganui to Maketu Point.

By the 14th, 60 km of coastline had been polluted.

Environment Minister Nick Smith described the grounding as New Zealand’s “most significant maritime environmental disaster”. This situation was all the more detrimental at a time when New Zealand was in the international spotlight as it hosted the Rugby World Cup.

Name: Rena

Date: 05/10/11

Location: New Zealand

Accident area: Bay of Plenty, North Island

Cause of spill: grounding

Type of pollutants: fuel oil and containers

Quantity transported: 1,368 containers (goods and various HNS including ferrosilicon and alkyl sulfonic acid) and 1,700 t of heavy fuel oil

Quantity spilt: 360 t of fuel oil and 88 containers

Ship type: container ship

Date built: 1990

Length: 235 m

Width: 32 m

Draugth: 12 m

Flag: Liberian

Owner: Costamare Inc. (Greece)

Charterer: MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company)

P&I club: Swedish Club

Overview on 10/01/2012
Tonnes of fuel pumped out	1,300
Number of containers definitively lost at sea	98
Number of containers recovered by Svitzer	389
Tonnes of waste collected on the beaches	993
Number of volunteers registered	7,950
Number of dead birds collected	2,049

Impact

The Bay of Plenty is one of the most popular tourist sites in New Zealand. It is also home to dolphins, whales, seals, penguins (in particular blue penguins) and various seabirds…

Oiled wildlife was sent to a national wildlife centre, were over 400 animals were cared for. By 22 November, the number of dead birds had reached the 2,000 mark.

Scientific studies on the impact of the Rena pollution and in particular the impact of dispersants on wildlife are currently underway.

Compensation

MSC, the container ship’s charterer, announced its decision to make a NZ$1 million “voluntary donation”, while the Swedish P&I Club which insures Costamare indicated that it intended to cover all costs related to the incident, including those related to the consequences of the pollution.

International cooperation – action by Cedre

An engineer from Cedre was sent to New Zealand from 22 to 30 October, upon invitation by Maritime New Zealand, in an observatory and advisory capacity on the incident management.

The on site engineer was able to take part in SCAT surveys and to visit waste treatment sites and a wildlife care centre.

Links

Maritime New Zealand
Authorities in charge of response. Information on all aspects of pollution response at sea and on the shoreline. Daily updates on operations.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council
Information on all aspects of shoreline response to the Rena incident.

Public Health Service
Information for the general public and response professionals on the potential toxicity of products spilt following the Rena incident.

Svitzer
Company contracted to deal with the wreck of the Rena.

Forest & bird
Information on the impact on birdlife.

AMSA Oil Spill Monitoring Handbook
Handbook by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and Maritime New Zealand providing guidelines for undertaking monitoring for actual or potential marine spill responses.

AMSA Oil Spill Monitoring Background Paper
Paper by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority and Maritime New Zealand providing guidance about the nature, justifiable scope, and scale of post spill monitoring programmes.