grounding of a Black Cat ferry on Saturday afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\nLouise Cook, chief investigator of accidents, said there were reportedly 38 passengers and three crew on-board the 17-metre catamaran, on a wildlife cruise.<\/p>\n
They were evacuated to nearby boats and no injuries were reported.<\/p>\n
Cook said getting the facts straight was vital, and she was keen to hear from people who were on-board or witnessed the accident, and to receive any photos or video footage.<\/p>\n
The investigation team would be travelling to Akaroa “as soon as practicable”, TAIC said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Over the next several days, they would be seeking and recovering any wreckage, securing electronic records – including photos, videos, and location data on people’s cellphones – and interviewing witnesses.<\/p>\n
Following the accident, passenger Chris Friedman – visiting from San Francisco – told RNZ it was a stressful experience on his last day in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He said there was a loud sound, as if the boat had run over something, and he thought it might be a rock. It was followed by a whizzing sound that could have been from the engine.<\/p>\n
“We were never really fearful that we were going to go down with the ship, but there was a teenager on-board who was quite scared and was crying, and there was also an older woman who was rather traumatised,” he said.<\/p>\n
The passengers were taken to the main wharf at Akaroa and no one was injured, he said.<\/p>\n
Environment Canterbury said it was monitoring and assessing the catamaran to minimise the impact of any fuel leaks or debris on the environment.<\/p>\n
“We are working alongside the owner, emergency services, the Department of Conservation, Maritime New Zealand, iwi and the local community.”<\/p>\n
Black Cat Cruises said it was the first time in more than 40 years that anything like this had happened.<\/p>\n
It was launching its own investigation, and said it would also be working with authorities.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Akaroa Photo: supplied A dedicated investigation team from the Transport Accident Investigation Commission will be on the ground…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-261391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Akaroa\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4KM2XYZ_akaroa_png.jpeg\")
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