School Children to Learn about Rena Grounding

School students will be able learn about New Zealand’s most significant maritime pollution emergency, the grounding of the container ship Rena, with a new education program launched this year.

“What now for the Rena?” is an article in “Getting the Message,” one of the issues in the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s Connected 2016 series. Connected promotes the exploration and learning of ideas in science, mathematics and technology for students in years 4 to 8.

Maritime NZ Director, Keith Manch, said the Rena grounding was a major maritime event. “Most of the 360 tons of oil, plus other pollution, was cleared within months, but the environmental, social, economic and cultural impacts continued for years and affected Tauranga and its iwi.” 

“What now for the Rena?” focuses on these long-term impacts of the grounding and looks at what factors were considered when deciding on the wreck’s future.
 
“As a country, because of the Rena and other emergencies like the Christchurch earthquakes, we have changed how we think about emergencies – how we prepare, respond and recover,” Manch said.

“We do as much as possible to address the effects of the incident and get things back to normal as soon as possible, but we have to understand that recovery can be very challenging and can take many years.

“Students can learn from this important maritime event in our country’s history.”

More information is available here.