Emergency Services

Environment Court

Transportation Services

Water Supply

Welfare

At Maritime New Zealand, it is our mission to lead and support the maritime community to take responsibility for ensuring our seas are safe, secure and clean, on behalf of all New Zealanders. 

Maritime NZ is a Crown entity, governed by an independent board appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Minister of Transport.

We are a Crown entity set up in 1993 and are governed by a five-member Board appointed by the Minister of Transport under the Maritime Transport Act 1994.

We have approximately 190 staff located in our 10 regional offices and Wellington head office, at our Marine Pollution Response Centre in Auckland and our Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand in Lower Hutt.

It is our mission to lead and support the maritime community to take responsibility for ensuring our seas are safe, secure and clean, on behalf of all New Zealanders.

Maritime NZ has three key roles:
1. Regulation and compliance
We help to develop and maintain the national safety, security and environmental protection regulations that govern the operation of vessels, ports and offshore installations in New Zealand waters. We support, encourage and require operator compliance with those regulations by:

licensing and certifying seafarers and commercial operations
educating the maritime community
auditing operators and service providers such as ship surveyors
investigating incidents to try to stop them happening again
enforcing the regulations to hold people to account for their actions.

2. Provision of maritime safety infrastructure
We maintain New Zealands coastal navigation aids to shipping (principally coastal lights), the national maritime distress and safety radio service, and an emergency locator beacon detection network for land, sea and air.

3. Response to incidents
We provide a national land, sea and air search and rescue coordination service. We also manage the development and improvement of national maritime incident and oil spill response capability, and lead New Zealands responses to significant maritime incidents and emergencies, including oil spills.

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Maritime New Zealand