Vessels

From 8 Jan - 27 Feb 2019, RV Tangaroa undertook a six-week research voyage to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

View a selection of images from our many ocean research voyages.

The RV Tangaroa is assisting in New Zealand’s largest ever deployment of seafloor earthquake recording instruments in a bid to learn more about the earthquake behaviour of the tectonic plates beneath the east coast of the North Island.

A versatile inshore vessel, RV Ikatere is equipped with high-precision multibeam and sub-bottom profiler transducers for surveying and mapping the seabed.

Kaharoa is capable of working throughout New Zealand's EEZ and further afield.

NIWA operates about 30 other Maritime New Zealand-certified vessels based at Bream Bay, Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Turangi, Wellington, Nelson, Greymouth, Tekapo, Christchurch, and Dunedin.

RV Tangaroa is New Zealand’s only ice strengthened and dynamically positioned deep-water research vessel.

Find out how you can have access to NIWA's research vessels to carry out marine research voyages.

While Tangaroa might be considered its flagship, NIWA’s extensive range of maritime work could not be completed without the support vessels Kaharoa and Ikatere.

Approved by the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, New Zealand was made sovereign over 1.7 million square kilometres of seafloor

Setting sail on day one the weather was brilliant and the swell minimal, a good omen for what was ahead.