{"id":358653,"date":"2026-04-01T13:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/358653\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T13:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:58:11","slug":"extremely-unlikely-man-who-fell-from-cook-strait-ferry-survived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/358653\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Extremely unlikely’ man who fell from Cook Strait ferry survived"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bill Hickman of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

Police say it is extremely unlikely that a man who went overboard from an Interislander ferry in Cook Strait earlier this week has survived.<\/p>\n

The man has not been located and searchers have been stood down.<\/p>\n

Wellington District Commander Superintendent Penny Gifford said police were advised of the missing man at 2.20am on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“This was a full ferry sailing, and the vehicle disembarkation process took about 50 minutes. At the end of that process, the ship’s crew found that a\u00a0vehicle was still on board\u00a0and began a search of the ship for the person associated with it.<\/p>\n

“Initial enquiries were undertaken, including further searches of the vessel and attempts to contact the man,” Gifford said.<\/p>\n

Gifford said CCTV camera footage from the ferry Kai\u0101rahi\u00a0confirmed the man went into the water just after 11pm – about two hours after the ship departed Picton.<\/p>\n

“Following confirmation of this, the Police Maritime Unit and the Rescue Co-ordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) were formally engaged shortly after 4am, and a co-ordinated maritime search and rescue operation was initiated,” she said.<\/p>\n

Gifford said multiple Police, Coastguard and aerial assets were deployed to find the man and drift modelling was used to guide search activity.<\/p>\n

“Weather conditions deteriorated throughout the day, reducing the effectiveness of surface searching. Expert advice received indicated survivability was extremely unlikely,” Gifford said.<\/p>\n

She said the maritime surface search in the area had been completed but broadcasts requesting vessels in the area to keep watch for the man would continue.<\/p>\n

Police were in contact with the man’s next of kin and the Coroner’s office had been advised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Bill Hickman of RNZ Police say it is extremely unlikely that a man who went overboard from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-358653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358653","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=358653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}