Bad weather and anticipated swells of up to 5m have once again put the Rena salvage operation on hold, with salvors hoping this won't result in the remaining 358 tonnes of oil on the stricken vessel spilling into the Bay of Plenty.
There are currently 3m swells around the Rena, but these are expected to get bigger as the weather deteriorates over the next 24 hours, Maritime New Zealand spokesman Ross Henderson said.
An aerial observation flight took off this morning to assess the situation.
Svitzer Salvage spokesman Matthew Watson told Radio New Zealand it was too dangerous to have salvors on board the vessel today.
"Even when there are very calm conditions that ship is a very dangerous place to be, so the risk of having them on board with swells of up to five metres means that we need to err on the side of caution.''
The salvage support vessel Go Canopus remained in the area overnight to monitor the situation.
`If the rear section (of the Rena) did break away the hope is that the Go Canopus may be able to tow her ... to a shallower section of water. The thinking again is that if it did break off ... it's far better to sink in a shallower section of water as opposed to the 60 or 70 metres of water where she's perched now.
"That Go Canopus is a very big, very powerful tug boat ... she's got a lot of power.''
Smaller tug boats were also on standby to intercept containers should they fall off the ship.
More than 1000 tonnes of oil has been removed from the Rena but there is still about 350 tonnes in a tank on the starboard side, which is the side of the ship leaning over into the water.
"We are playing a very big waiting game once again with mother nature. The one thing that the salvors cannot beat or outsmart is mother nature, so we are in a holding pattern,'' Mr Watson said.
