Statoil ship silent as protesters search

Greenpeace is accusing Statoil's seismic surveying ship of flouting the law in a way that is hazardous to other shipping.

It says the Amazon Warrior briefly transmitted from its Automatic Identification System on Monday, but the rest of the time the mandatory system was shut off.

That means thoughout Monday's 7.8 magnitude earthquake, the subsequent tsunami threat and the week's storms the 125 metre long ship was electronically invisible to other maritime users.

Climate and energy campaigner, Kate Simcock, says the ship seems to have purposefully turned off its AIS in order to hide from people protesting against its search for oil.

She says the survey area from Napier and Kaikoura is inhabited by thousands of whales and dolphins, which could be deafened by the sonic blasts which will emanate from the ship every eight seconds for months.

Almost 70 iwi and hapu from Cape Runaway to Kaikoura have called on Statoil and Chevron to cease their operations and leave New Zealand.

Ms Simcock says it's crazy the Government has invited the world’s biggest oil surveying machine to search for the oil that scientists say can’t be burned because of the climate emergency.

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