Look Out Rocks … Oops Too Late

We live in a world where we do not know what we do not know. We look out at sea but cannot see what is under water. The crews and passengers of large ships put trust in the marine charts that have been supplied by Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) little knowing that since 1999 they have failed to record the correct position of chart datum rocks. We live in a country surrounded by reefs and rocks. In recent years three large ships have hit rocks in our territorial waters: the MS Mikhail Lermontov, MV Rena, and now the NZ Navy warship the HMNZS Manawanui. The common denominator to all three of these sinkings is the error ridden LINZ NZ Marine Charts.

So what ship is going to be next? Could it be one of the overseas cruise liners as they together make 1000 port visits and bring 350,000 visitors a year, with an estimated $540 million being spent in New Zealand? They will be cruising around our coasts and perhaps taking the ships a little closer to the shore of an island or a headland not knowing the course they are taking could be directly on to rocks that LINZ have failed to record correctly. Or they could take a course that puts them onto a sand bank, as one of the Picton ferries did, believing they had 150 metres clearance.

In 2006 I was gathering information for one of my NZ Fishing Coast to Coast stories and I found that a rock, normally under water by two metres, was now visible above the sea surface by over 400 millimetres. This was caused by one of the effects of a changing climate as often New Zealand becomes surrounded by a higher than normal high air pressure system which has lowered the sea level. By habit I recorded its GPS position and entered its position into my Garmin Home Port GPS computer programme. The rock was 150 metres from where the LINZ electronic chart said it was located.

When I discussed the GPS error on LINZ marine charts with my editor Mike Rendell of the magazine NZ Fishing Coast to Coast, he took the opportunity to check the rocks depicted as at chart datum along the Coromandel Coast and he found them all out of position on the LINZ Marine Charts by 150 metres as well. When the current President of the Wellington Surfcasting and Angling Club and I fished a NZ Angling and Casting National fishing competition at New Plymouth, we also took the opportunity to check the position of rocks described as being at chart datum on the LINZ marine charts and they were all out of position by 150 metres.

But it’s a worldwide issue that is only known to a few. The error did not appear when the first GPS system was introduced which was called Wooden Gooden 49. The error appeared after America found the world was oval and they introduced the current WGS 84 for their nuclear submarines which we now use. This new GPS system put all of our previous GPS underwater marks out of position by 150 metres. Satellites can’t be used to correct the charts as it is the underwater rocks that cannot be seen. This explains why three ships have hit rocks in New Zealand waters and one overseas cruise liner. At the enquiries into the sinkings, no one questioned the LINZ marine charts because if they had, the charts would have been corrected by now.

I read the report into the sinking of the Costa Concordia with 4000 passengers on board to see why it hit rocks off the Island of Giglio in the Mediterranean Sea in 2012. It was reported that a crew member turned the ship the wrong way and the captain tried to maneuver his ship away from the reef only to cause the ship’s stern to turn into the reef. The captain would have been unaware his chart plotter was recording all rocks out by 150 metres. The chart error cost the lives of 32 people and put the captain in jail for sixteen years.

The pilot in charge of the MS Mikhail Lermontov was requested to use the electronic LINZ Marine Charts and the ship hit a reef, and one person died. The Pilot was known to take ships between the rocks on a compass bearing using the NZ Navy paper chart. At the time no one would have known the electronic LINZ charts the captain was supplied with had chart datum rocks out by 150 metres.

In 2002 I was supplied with the latest booklet from the Maritime Safety Authority (MSA) describing the “Cook Strait Submarine Cable Protection Zone” position and when I put the GPS marks on my computer, they were all out by 150 metres. On 14 September 2002 I informed Russell Kilvington, Director Maritime NZ(MSA), that the booklet they had just widely distributed was displaying incorrect GPS marks for the cable protection zone at the northern and southern ends of the cable. MSA had just proved they had also failed to keep up with the information that the world was oval and were still using the old Wooden Gooden 49 GPS system instead of the new WGS 84 GPS system.

MSA’s new booklet had the shoreline mark for the protection zone 150 metres out to sea and east by 80 metres. The South Island mark for the CPZ was 150 metres south of the chart marked cable line and inland by 80 metres. I was not impressed that an organisation tasked with directing marine search and rescue would produce a booklet that contained a major error. It is little wonder when MSA get involved in a marine search and rescue project they have not a clue which way the Cook Strait currents move and for how long. When a Picton Ferry lifeboat fell off, it washed ashore while MSA had searchers looking out to sea in the opposite direction.

Last year I came across another major error on the LINZ Marine Charts at a Port Nicholson Yacht Club’s event when a senior manager from the MSA was invited to speak. As he rounded off his presentation, he stated that the Tonga Port Authority had requested all shipping to travel down the channel they had marked with buoys into and out of the Port and not use the LINZ chart marked route. He told the meeting MSA did not know why. I described to him that the LINZ chart marked shipping channel would be 150 metres out of position. He had trouble accepting this information and his reply described how MSA have difficulty accepting local knowledge when someone goes missing at sea.

LINZ have used information from 153 scientific studies of the Cook Strait seabed currents and then called them surface currents on their marine charts. Police use MSA and LINZ misinformation which makes search and rescue operations in the Cook Strait a shambles. Surface currents in the Cook Strait are caused by changing low pressure systems and strong winds and as such cannot be predicted.

As LINZ marine charts show underwater rocks 150 metres from their true position, those on the New Zealand warship HMNZS Manawanui must have hit the rock they saw on their chart plotter that they were trying to avoid.

The current displayed on the LINZ marine charts for the current into Lyall Bay is 0.2knots. The current off the bay has been recorded by science as 7 knots and off the Points the currents will exceed that as three to four metre pressure waves can be seen. A major storm after the Wellington Airport runway was extended moved the 40 tonne rocks protecting the extension out to sea and along the coast to Island Bay. The LINZ charts describe a 7 knot current at Karori Light which is totally incorrect proven when a Fast Ferry sailed into thirteen meter peaking and collapsing pressure waves and free fell down the waves stoving in the side by two metres.

It was in 1999 that I first became aware of the errors in the LINZ marine charts when the Wellington Regional Council called resource consent to dump 100,000 tonnes of dredge waste onto a major submarine freshwater spring. I had been supplied with the GPS position and wrote a submission opposing the proposal but soon found out what it was like to oppose a Wellington Regional Council resource consent.

Scientists at Victoria University never knew of the springs in the harbour and called the springs natural holes and depressions in the harbour at the hearing. Having fished the springs, I knew the value of them to marine species while members of the Wellington Surfcasting and Angling have caught 56 different species over 500 grams in the harbour.

I wrote to the then Minister of Conservation Nick Smith, and the then Minister for the Environment Simon Upton, asking that they declare the submarine springs an “Area of significant conservation value” but they refused as they reasoned that the springs were not identified by LINZ on the Wellington Harbour’s Marine Chart NZ 4633. The treatment I received from the Commissioners and WRC staff stands as one of the worst treatments I have ever received and provided me with a further reason to continue to contribute my marine knowledge at resource consent hearings, Government Board of Enquiry hearings and write twenty two stories for the NZ Fishing Coast to Coast magazine.

In October 1999 I wrote to the Chief Topographic/Hydrographer at LINZ, John Spittal, asking him to show the holes and depressions in Wellington Harbour as submarine freshwater springs on marine charts and he refused. A year later with the introduction of WGS 84 all of the springs had a new location, and I supplied him with correct position of the springs. Again he refused to correct the Wellington Harbour Marine Charts. Now WRC are using the LINZ chart errors of the spring’s position as a dredge waste dump site causing irreparable damage to the covering layer resulting in a sustainable loss of ground water pressure and a threat to future generations’ artesian water supply.

We live with a Health and Safety Act which requires those who have a knowledge of a safety risk to speak up. Not do so makes that person also to blame for an accident. I have written to the Minister of Defence Judith Collins with the information that our marine charts are not displaying the correct position of chart datum rocks and asking her to not blame those on the warship for its sinking. I also copied the letter to the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Deputy Prime Minister Nicola Willis, and Chris Bishop.

A little about myself

My acquisition of this degree of marine knowledge is not by accident as it is a hobby gone mad - I describe it as a bit like building a jigsaw puzzle without knowing the final picture. I have predicted eight times now when and where marine mammals will beach themselves and proved the Wellington Airport extension could not go into Evans Bay. It took me five years to convince the WCC to build a boat ramp on the Wellington South Coast where I had selected. I have written twenty two stories about the marine environment and proved storm surges can be predicted and will not occur again on the next high tide.

I have been on Government committees since 1989, Mfish, DOCNGO, MofE Environmental groups and Ocean Policy Group discussions, Lower Hutt and Wellington City Councils wastewater and stormwater committees since 1999. In that time, I asked the Helen Clark to correct the NZ Coastal Policy Statement (NZCPS) as it did not contain information describing the value of the intertidal zone to marine species. I then worked with Chris Carter to help set up the Board of Enquiry. There were sixty submissions and our WRMFA submission was the only one that described the value of the intertidal zone to marine species.

Unfortunately, neither the NZCPS nor the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management has any information describing the value of the intertidal zone value to marine species although the necessary information was supplied for both. I stopped the grooming of Petone Beach and was personally responsible for the public being made aware that marine life does not live in plastic. I was asked to be the marine expert for those at Makara opposing the Meridian West Wind turbine project. The Meridian project called for a breakwater wall and causeway at either Oteranga Bay or Ohau Bay which was a threat to marine mammals, and I convinced Meridian to build a wharf to unload wind turbine parts for their West Wind project and then remove it after the work was done and this was accepted and acted upon.

I drove my boat into the wake of a big fast ferry and took a photo of my depth sounder image. At the time I was on the DOCNGO committee and I showed the photo to Hugh Logan, DOC Director General, and sent a letter to Sandra Lee, the then Minister of Conservation, with the photo showing her that the underwater wave was blasting the sea bed in 42 metres of water along with details of the damage they were doing to marine life in the 25 metres deep Marlborough Sounds.

The seaweed, now covered mud, has died off and the once massive pilchard and yellowed eyed mullet schools have been sucked up and destroyed. The food source for blue cod was now gone and a closed three month season for recreational fishers was introduced by MPI who have once again demonstrated a lack of marine knowledge as they state the closure is to allow fish spawning, obviously never having read a Masters paper on blue cod as the cod spawn in the outer Sounds where MPI have allowed commercial fishing.

I also explained to the Minister that in theory the fast ferries’jet units would, as the ships passed through the proposed marine reserve at Island Bay, empty the reserve in six days. Three months later the fast ferries were taken out of New Zealand.

Jim Mikoz is President of the Wellington Recreational Marine Fishers Association, and Honorary Vice President of the New Zealand Angling and Casting Association.

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