Fourteen adults managed to escape<\/a> from the stricken launch before it sank in about 8m of water off M\u014dt\u012bt\u012b Island. It was taken back to Tauranga.<\/p>\n![\"The]()
The stern of the 18.2m launch being raised from the sea floor near M\u014dtiti Island after it hit submerged rocks on May 16. Photo \/ Sean Kelly, Pacific 7<\/p>\n
Waikato Regional Harbourmaster Chris Bredenback said the vessel was being towed to Whang\u0101rei by the owner and his associates when it sank.<\/p>\n
He said salvage company Trojan Marine Services would be \u201cvery motivated\u201d to lift the launch off the ocean floor and get it to wherever they needed to go.<\/p>\n
Trojan Marine Services said in a statement the recovery of the sunken vessel was under way but it would not comment on the progress of the operation.<\/p>\n
The company said the weather and sea conditions had been \u201catrocious\u201d for the past four days, with strong winds, heavy swells and heavy downpours.<\/p>\n
Maritime New Zealand manager of general regulatory operations central, Blair Simmons, said it was gathering information about the circumstances of the September 21 sinking of the vessel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will inform any future regulatory steps we may take. The vessel changed ownership between the earlier sinking in May and the recent incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the investigation into the May sinking was complete and \u201cresulted in an educational approach being taken with the parties involved\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said the probe found the skipper\u2019s emergency preparedness contributed to the \u201cbest possible outcome\u201d for those on board, despite the loss of the vessel.<\/p>\n
Sandra Conchie<\/a> is a senior journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post who has been a journalist for 25 years. She mainly covers police, court and other justice stories, as well as general news. She has been a Canon Media Awards regional\/community reporter of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It did not pose an environmental risk, having been cleared of oil and other hazardous contaminants when it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3989,2514,3331,206,111,43,139,69,1118,6662,38053,8466,38052,38054,8207],"class_list":["post-42506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-effort","tag-island","tag-launch","tag-luxury","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-off","tag-salvage","tag-second","tag-sinking","tag-slipper","tag-sparks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42506","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=42506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}