Post date: May 25, 2012 11:42:16 AM
TAURANGA, NEW ZEALAND (MAY 25, 2012) (TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND (TVNZ) - The captain and the navigation officer of a container ship which smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday spot were jailed on Friday (May 25) for causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.
New Zealand jails the captain and the navigation officer of the cargo ship Rena for grounding vessel which smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday spot.
The two men, captain Mauro Balomaga and navigation officer Leonil Relon, both Filipino nationals, were jailed for seven months.
They had faced maximum terms of seven years imprisonment.
The men pleaded guilty to charges of operating the 47,230-tonne Liberian-flagged Rena in a dangerous manner, releasing toxic substances, and attempting to pervert the course of justice by altering the ship's documents.
The 236-metre (775-foot) vessel struck a reef about 20 km (12 miles) off Tauranga, New Zealand's biggest export port, in October last year, spewing around 300 tonnes of toxic fuel oil into the ocean, killing thousands of sea birds and fouling beaches up to 100 km (60 miles) from the reef.
The judge said the sentence took into account that the pair had already been vilified, and that they would be held in a foreign jail.
The court was told the captain had ordered the navigation officer to take short cuts to ensure the ship did not arrive at Tauranga late.
The government prosecutor said the crew had not complied with basic navigation practices and there had been what he called "substantial deviations" from the approved course.
The rear section of the ship has fallen off the reef and is all but submerged but the bow section is still aground and wedged upright.
Salvage teams are still removing containers off the ship, which has broken in half with the back section having fallen off the reef.
Around half of the ship's 1,300 containers have been recovered, and salvors managed to recover virtually all of the remaining 1,000 tonnes of fuel oil on board.
The vessel's owners Daina Shipping, a unit of Greece's Costamare Inc., have also been charged with discharging harmful substances, which carries a maximum fine of NZ$600,000 ($451,000), and an additional fine of NZ$10,000 for each day the offending continues.