The New Zealand Civil Defence acknowledges there were mixed messages with this morning's tsunami warning following this morning's 7.6 magnitude earthquake off the Kermadec Islands.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued and cancelled its tsunami warnings before the Civil Defence; however, the PTWC warnings are not an official status for New Zealand.
Civil Defence advisories are the official status for New Zealand.
Civil Defence operations manager David Coetzee said there were mixed messages as to the warning situation this morning, the New Zealand Herald reports.
"I appreciate it can be pretty confusing," he said.
He told Radio New Zealand this morning it bases its decisions off GNS Science advice, and this morning's tsunami threat ended up being lower than expected.
The tsunami warning was cancelled by Civil Defence just after 9am; however, a marine threat remains.
"We follow well established procedures that we have designed with the support of our scientific advisors," Mr Coetzee said.
"So when earthquakes of a certain magnitude occur within a certain area at a certain depth then we start doing things as a matter of process. And we assess the threat from there on and we either upscale or downscale [the threat], whatever we need to do.
"But we can't wait until a proper, more confident assessment has been made - we need to act fast and in this case two to three hours travel time from the Kermadecs to the first New Zealand coast.
"We take the precautionary route and do what we have to do."
The wave from the tsunami has already reached Northland, the East Cape, Gisborne, and Auckland.
There has been some wave activity in Northland in the 10s of cm, but based on the latest information the public safety message is still to stay out of the water because of the trickle effect further south of Hawkes Bay.
Mr Coetzee said for anyone who does go into the water, "you might find you will be smashed around and it may be life-threatening".
The marine threat remains for the entire day, he said.
"The nature of a tsunami is not one single wave and then it is all over, in fact it continues for many hours and ... you will not necessarily noticing the disturbance [in the water] with the naked eye, but it will be there."
