Weather Delays Divers

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31077, 4 June 1966, Page 18

Weather Delays Divers

(N Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, June 3. Worsening weather threatens to delay the Navy divers anxious to determine if oil bubbles, spotted off Cape Reinga today, mark the resting place of the lost collier Kaitawa.

The oil bubbles were marked with buoys by the fisheries patrol ship, Inverell, and the Kaiama was asked to investigate with sensitive sonar equipment. The soundings indicated that a wreck could rest below. Divers were sent down from the Inverell, but found only rocky outcrops. Their working time on the sea bed was severely restricted by a strong current, and another dive was ordered for mid-afternoon, to coincide with low water. But as the divers, under Lieutenant N. Merric, prepared for another underwater hunt, the weather deteriorated.

Commander P. R. H. Silk, of Devonport, said: “Conditions have deteriorated. The wind is blowing from the north-west at 25 knots and there is a heavy swell. Visibility is down to five miles and conditions are unsuitable for diving. The afternoon dive was cancelled.” The Inverell would be back over the site of the oil slick at first light and, if weather allowed, would send down divers, he said.

The bubbling oil was on a bearing of 240 degrees from

the Cape Reinga light, four miles north of Cape Maria Van Diemen.

Meanwhile, the frigate Taranaki was ordered to steam south to Dunedin and stand by for an expected casualty evacuation from the Antarctic. An American seaman at McMurdo Sound has injured himself in a fall and may have to be flown to New Zealand. If the mercy flight is undertaken, the Taranaki will stand by as a mid-ocean weather ship.