New Zealand oil spill response strategy - Maritime New Zealand

All New Zealand marine waters are designated as pre-approved for dispersant application, unless
specifically excluded in either a regional plan or the National Marine Oil Spill Contingency Plan. In all
cases, the NOSC has the authority to use dispersant even in excluded areas, if this will lead to the
greatest net environmental benefit. Oil Spill Dispersant Guidelines for use in New Zealand have been
produced to assist the decision making process. 4
Shoreline Response
Once oil has reached the shore, the environmental impact and cost of cleaning are often much greater
than if the spill had been dealt with at sea.
The primary options for shoreline response are:
• Pre-cleaning (to improve access and reduce waste);
• Mechanical and/or manual clean-up;
• Natural recovery;
• Bioremediation (using living organisms to speed oil degradation).
A recent innovation to shoreline response has been the development of Shoreline Clean-up
Assessment Treatment (SCAT). This involves delineating the impacted coast into homogenous
segments, and gathering data on each to assist prioritisation. This process can be augmented by prespill
segmentation at the contingency planning stage, to speed responses during an incident.
Wildlife Response
The aim of wildlife response is to avoid, remedy or mitigate any detrimental impacts on wildlife during
an oil pollution response. This primarily concerns marine and coastal birds, reptiles, and where safety
allows, marine mammals, due to their susceptibility, protection status and community expectations.
While the OSC is directly responsible for ensuring there is a credible and effective wildlife response,
additional specific expertise will be needed. Maritime New Zealand has contracted Massey University
to develop and maintain a Tier 3 wildlife response operational plan annexed to the National Plan, a
national wildlife treatment facility, and personnel and equipment for use during spill response. The
Department of Conservation and Tangata Whenua should also be involved where protected or
culturally significant species (see Appendix 5) are threatened, and as key conservation management
stakeholders.
Wildlife response will, whenever possible adhere to international best practice protocols while
prioritising human safety as well as animal welfare. Where appropriate, it may involve exclusion
(‘hazing’), and/or pre-emptive capture. In all cases, monitoring of rescued and released wildlife should
be an integral component of the rehabilitation process providing feedback to improve efficiency of ongoing
operations.
Should a spill occur whereby there is no direct response action to contain and recover the oil, wildlife
response may be the only intervention activity undertaken.
Wildlife response costs authorised by the OSC are fully recoverable from the spiller, under both the
Maritime Transport Act and the Civil Liability Convention 1969. It is recognised that oiled wildlife may
be discovered after other response efforts have ceased, and this should be taken into account during
de-escalation and termination.
Oil Spill Response Capability
Though an effective response capability has been firmly established in New Zealand under the
previous response strategies, every effort should be made to ensure continuous development, with a
strong commitment to build experience in personnel.
Equipment
Maritime New Zealand will allocate sufficient basic equipment to the regional councils to respond to
spills identified in the risk assessment as likely to occur within their individual boundaries. The amount
of equipment deployed in the regions depends on the potential size of oil spills identified and the type
of product e.g., those with major oil terminals have more specialist equipment. This gives each region
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Available on request from Maritime New Zealand or the Cawthron Institute.
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