In the middle of the night on 5 October 2011, the container ship Rena ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off the northern coast of New Zealand. The ship was carrying nearly 1,500 containers, 1,700 tons of heavy oil, and 200 tons of diesel fuel. As the hours progressed, the crack in the hull of the ship grew, increasing the risk of it breaking in half. All the while, more and more containers fell off the ship, washing ashoreon nearby islands and the coast of mainland New Zealand. By 14 October the ship had completely cracked in half, spilling its contents into the ocean surrounding it. Costamare Inc., the shipping company and operator of Rena, apologized to the public and helped pay for the cost of the cleanup. Ecologists estimated that 20,000 birds were impacted by the oil spill. The local fish populations were also found to be severely contaminated following the disaster. Locals had to remove over a thousand tons of sand around Tauranga, the region whose coasts were most directly impacted by the spill, to absorb as much of the oil as possible.
Contributed by Sophia Callahan
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US
- Hunt, Sonya, Kelly Smith, Heather Hamerton, and Rebecca J. Sargisson. "An Incident Control Centre in Action: Response to the Rena Oil Spill in New Zealand." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 22 (2014): 63–66.
- Sargisson, Rebecca J., Sonya Hunt, Patricia Hanlen, Kelly Smith, and Heather Hamerton. "Volunteering: A Community Response to the Rena Oil Spill in New Zealand." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 20, no. 4 (2012): 208–218.