Samoa elderly denied NZ citizenship entitlements
A Pacific community leader says while many elderly Samoan individuals have been granted NZ citizenship, they are being turned down by work and income services.
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RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Trio rescued from life raft in Pacific Ocean
By Kajal Nair , RNZ A life raft alongside a merchant vessel. Photo: NZDF / supplied Three people are safe after being rescued from a life-raft in the ocean following mechanical failure on their vessel. Their launch was heading from New Zealand to Tonga when it ran into trouble on Thursday afternoon, around 350 nautical miles northeast of New Zealand. A mayday was issued, and the crew activated an emergency beacon before abandoning ship for a life-raft. The distress signal was picked up by a nearby merchant tanker, the only vessel in range. Following this, a New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) F8 aircraft was deployed to assist. "Getting on-board a large vessel on the open ocean from a life raft is not an easy task," Taylor Monaghan, search and rescue officer at the Rescue Coordination Centre, said. "This was done at night, in trying conditions as well." At about 11pm, the trio were safely brought aboard the tanker. A life raft alongside a merchant vessel. Photo: NZDF / supplied Maritime New Zealand praised the coordinated effort and quick action of both the tanker crew and the NZDF. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
12 hours ago
- RNZ News
256-year-old relic of European contact with NZ rediscovered in RNZ podcast
A 256-year-old anchor described by Heritage New Zealand as "one of the oldest relics of early European contact with New Zealand" has been located after vanishing for 43 years. The anchor, lost by a French ship more than 250 years ago, had been located by the famous underwater treasure hunter Kelly Tarlton in 1982, but nobody had seen it since. Efforts to relocate the anchor have been the focus of the RNZ podcast Kelly Tarlton's Final Treasure Hunt . "I think we found… well, I don't think - I know we found the last de Surville anchor," marine engineer Brendan Wade said in a phone interview, still aboard his boat in Doubtless Bay. "It's really exciting." Brendan Wade treasure hunting. Photo: Ellie Callahan The anchor, estimated at 4.1 metres long, and weighing more than a tonne, once belonged to the French ship Saint Jean Baptiste , which arrived off the coast of Doubtless Bay in 1769 - around the same time Captain James Cook was making his first voyage to New Zealand. The ship's crew were dropping dead of scurvy, and its commander, Captain Jean-François Marie de Surville, had been forced to make landfall in Aotearoa New Zealand. The crew were nursed back to health by members of Ngāti Kahu living near the northern edge of Doubtless Bay. Relations between tangata whenua and the new arrivals were initially peaceful. However, that changed when one of the ship's small boats was lost in a storm and washed up on shore. It was claimed by local Māori as a gift from Tangaroa. De Surville retaliated to what he interpreted as theft by setting fire to a nearby kainga, and seizing two carved waka. He also kidnapped a local rangatira named Ranginui , who was taken away in chains, and subsequently died of thirst and scurvy aboard the Saint Jean Baptiste . The storm which precipitated these events also claimed three of the Saint Jean Baptiste' s large iron anchors. The ship's logs capture in harrowing detail how the ship was blown "within musket shot" of the cliffs of the Karikari Peninsula after the cable securing the ship to its anchor snapped. Two other anchors were deployed, but failed to find purchase on the sandy bottom of the bay. De Surville gave orders to cut the two remaining anchors loose in an effort to save the ship. His second in command, Guilliam Labe, recorded in his journal that "the vessel stayed for quite a long time without answering to her rudder and we stared death in the face, seeing rocks along the length of the ship fit to make your hair stand on end". Thanks to an extraordinary piece of seamanship, the vessel was saved, but the three anchors were lost. The anchor had been located by the famous underwater treasure hunter Kelly Tarlton in 1982, but nobody had seen it since. Photo: Supplied to RNZ The three anchors remained at the bottom of the ocean for more than 200 years until the first was discovered by famous marine treasure hunter (and aquarium founder) Kelly Tarlton in 1974. It was retrieved from the bottom of the ocean and now hangs above the foyer at Te Papa museum. The second anchor was found later that year by Northland diver Mike Bearsley and installed at Te Ahu Museum in Kaitaia. The third anchor was located in 1982 by a team including Kelly Tarlton, his daughter Nicole Tarlton, Vietnamese diver Hung Nguyen and Kelly's brother-in-law Peter Pettigrew. Kelly Tarlton recorded the location of the anchor, but in the 40 years since his papers were lost and despite many experienced divers looking for it, nobody had managed to relocate it. In the process of making his podcast, Kelly Tarlton's Final Treasure Hunt , host Hamish Williams explored the possibility the anchor might have been illicitly salvaged, and made the centrepiece of a music festival at Te Arai called "Shipwrecked". However a later expedition to Doubtless Bay with marine engineer Brendan Wade, two of Kelly's former treasure hunting companions, Keith Gordon and Dave Moran, as well as local diver Whetu Rutene (Ngāti Kahu) suggested the anchor was still at the bottom of the ocean. The team used a magnetometer to search the bay, and detected a large magnetic anomaly on the seabed. However, underwater searches of the location were unsuccessful, raising the possibility that the anchor may have been buried by sediment, or that the equipment was defective. Then, just days before the final episode of the podcast was released, there was a new development. Hamish and Fiona Tarlton with flowers for Kelly in December 2020. Photo: Hamilton Williams Kelly Tarlton had filed the detailed notes of his discovery of the anchor at his Museum of Shipwrecks, and these files were later sold at auction when the museum closed in the early 2000s. Auction records suggested the files had been sold to Kelly's brother in-law Peter Pettigrew, but Pettigrew had no recollection of purchasing them, and insisted the records must be mistaken. However, just days before the podcast was launched, Pettigrew discovered the file buried at the back of a storage unit. "[It was] the very last carton at the very back of the lock up on the ground level, the lowest rung of all was 'item 65, Kelly's Archives'," Pettigrew explained. But finding the notes turned out to be just the first step. Marine engineer Brendan Wade, partner to Ellie Callahan - one of the podcasts producers - had become heavily involved in the search for the anchor, lending both his expertise and his equipment, including his boat, a remotely operated underwater vehicle, and a sophisticated sonar-scanning array to the endeavour. Wade recalled the moment he received the email with Kelly's long-lost notes. "I thought 'f***ing eureka we've got it!'" But that enthusiasm was short-lived. It turned out that Kelly's notes did not include precise coordinates. Instead they had drawings and readings taken using a sextant, an old-fashioned navigational tool used to estimate the location of a ship at sea by referencing landmarks on shore against the position of the sun. Converting sextant readings into GPS coordinates is not a simple task. Luckily, Wade was at sea working on a survey ship at the time and was able to lean on the expertise of his colleagues. "There's a bit of clever maths involved to do this, but the boys very graciously taught me," he explained. To Wade's surprise, the coordinates he calculated didn't match the location of the magnetometer signal found in the previous expedition. He was initially sceptical that Kelly Tarlton had accurately recorded his position "I actually kinda thought I just want[ed] to go up and disprove this, because it doesn't match anything else. We've got this [magnetometer signal], that's where the anchor is." Brendan Wade with the second de Surville anchor at Te Ahu Museum in Kaitaia. Photo: Ellie Callahan Braving wild weather which brought severe flooding to parts of the country last week, Wade motored out to the coordinates with his ROV - invoking the spirit of Kelly Tarlton along the way. "I had a chat to Kelly on the way out there and said 'come on mate, you've to to help me out here!'" Wade remembered. After several attempts were foiled by heavy swell, Wade finally managed to get his ROV into the water, and was astonished by what he found. "Out of the gloom was this massive ring, and you kind of look at it and you think, oh, maybe that, Could that be natural? No, it's not natural … it turned out to be the ring on the shank of the anchor. And then as I saw further down, you could start seeing the shank of the anchor laying down on the seabed, and then out of the gloom in this massive fluke, just sticking vertically up." Wade says the anchor is sitting at a depth of approximately 28 meters, and one of its flukes is jammed so firmly in the seabed that the main shaft of the anchor is actually suspended horizontally just above the seafloor. The anchor is encrusted with marine life including large sponges, and appears to be home to a single Leatherjacket, which Wade's two children have dubbed "the guardian fish". Heritage New Zealand's has confirmed the authenticity of Wade's find saying in a statement: "By the description of the location and its physical shape and scale it is almost certainly the third anchor associated with de Surville and his ship the St Jean Baptiste . As such, the anchor is one of the oldest relics of early European contact with New Zealand." Heritage New Zealand have recommended the site remain undisturbed until tangata whenua have been consulted, and the area can be assessed by a professional archaeologist. As for what the late Kelly Tarlton would have made of the rediscovery of his anchor 43 years later, his daughter Fiona laughed and said he would have said "it bloody took you long enough!".
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
Principals fear increase in students from poor communities leaving school without qualifications
Papakura High School principal Simon Craggs. Photo: RNZ / Luka Forman Principals warn the number of school-leavers with no qualifications could spike in poor communities this year. One South Auckland principal said as many as a third of teenagers leaving schools in Tai Tokerau and South Auckland could have no NCEA certificates - double the normal figures. Their warnings followed the release of results from high-stakes NCEA literacy and numeracy tests held in May. Before the Covid pandemic,14 to 17 percent of school-leavers in Tai Tokerau and South Auckland had no qualifications. The after-effects of lockdowns drove that figure to 21 percent in 2023. Principals had been hoping numbers would improve, but told RNZ pass rates of 39-49 percent for Northland and South Auckland teens in NCEA reading, writing and maths tests did not bode well. Looking at the socio-economic factors, 34 percent of students from the third of schools facing the highest barriers passed the numeracy assessment, 41 percent passed reading and 35 percent passed writing. Students could attempt the tests again in September, but Simon Craggs from Papakura High School said it was likely a significant number would fail and leave without an NCEA qualification. "A third would probably be realistic because you're going to have students in Year 13 who still haven't achieved the corequisites despite having Year 11, Year 12 working toward them," he said. Craggs said schools were working hard to help students over the line - either by preparing them for the September tests or through the 20 English and maths credits they could use until 2027 to meet the benchmark. Aorere College principal Leanne Webb said she had hoped the unqualified school-leaver rate would improve this year but there was a danger more young people would leave school unable to enrol in further study because they had failed the tests. "They'll walk away from school, there'll be no recognition of what they have achieved at school and when times are tough, and times are tough, and there aren't sufficient places in tertiary organisations for them, who gets shoved to the bottom of the heap? It'll be the kids that don't have a qualification. What is there for them then? Do they just get to roam the streets?" she said. Aorere College principal Leanne Webb. Photo: RNZ Webb said her students' achievement of the literacy and numeracy corequisite had improved, but for many that was due to the alternative 20-credit pathway rather than the online tests. She said the problem with that option was the 20 credits could not be counted toward the 60 required for an NCEA certificate. "If you take away 10 credits out of their English achievement and 10 credits out of their maths achievement, they then have to get another 20 credits on top of their programme in order to get NCEA, that's the problem," she said. "Last year, while we were pleased with our results, it came at the expense of achieving NCEA." Both principals said their students were doing better than last year but government-funded assistance had not been much help. Webb said her school did not take up the offered training because it did not fit with the school's timetable and Craggs said the training was of limited use. "I don't think the on-the-ground support that we have been looking for has really been provided. So we're just doing our own thing and working within our own resources to improve," he said. "There's certainly a lot more interest from our senior advisers at the ministry in our results and how things are going, but not a lot in the way of support." The next round of literacy and numeracy tests is scheduled for September. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
