Wellington (dpa) – The crippled cargo ship Rena, which ran aground three months ago on a New Zealand reef, broke in two after being pounded by 6-meter sea swells overnight, officials said Sunday. The stern section of the 47,000-ton vessel is now nearly 30 meters from the front, which remains stuck firmly on the reef, 22 kilometers off the east coast port of Tauranga. “There has been a significant discharge of containers and container debris from the ship,” said Ross Henderson, spokesman for the Maritime New Zealand agency, which is supervising salvage of the wreck. With strong winds and high sea swells expected to continue over the next three to four days, Henderson said the maritime disaster national response team had been activated to respond to the potential release of oil from the ship and to treat any affected wildlife. The ship, which has been listing more than 20 degrees after running aground on October 5, had survived four significant storms, which caused a fracture across the center of its hull. A Maritime New Zealand spokesman said last week that there was very little holding the two sections together, and it had been expected to break up in the stormy conditions. The ship leaked about 360 tons of heavy fuel oil after grounding, and salvage teams managed to siphon off more than another 1,000 tons. Maritime New Zealand said there was still oil that workers could not reach on the wreck. More than 2,000 seabirds died after being trapped in the thick oil, and nearly 400 oil-contaminated blue penguins were captured and cleaned. Salvage teams using a crane-equipped boat removed nearly 400 containers of cargo from the Rena, and 98 were lost overboard in the storms, but nearly 900 remained on the ship, mostly below deck. Cargo spilled from broken containers, including timber, meat, dairy products and animal skins intended for export, have washed up on local islands and beaches. The Filipino captain and navigation officer of the Liberian-flagged Rena spent Christmas in New Zealand on bail, awaiting trial on criminal charges related to the ship's grounding, which could see them sent to prison for up to seven years. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/RQlM5 Tags: featured, New Zealand, Oil, Rena Section: Environment, Latest News, Oceana
