Niwa, Chinese to explore trench

The Chinese have arrived and they have brought a submarine.

But they come in peace. In fact they come with a scientific focus, stopping at Bluff en route to further south.

The Tan Suo Yi Hao research vessel berthed in Bluff on Thursday and was scheduled to leave Bluff at 9pm yesterday.

It is a research/survey vessel and sails under the flag of China. The ship is 94.45m long and 18m wide.

It is set to head to the Puysegur Trench, which is south of Fiordland, as part of a research project by Chinese and New Zealand organisations.

The vessel is undertaking deep sea exploration of marine biodiversity off the southwest coast of New Zealand, in the Puysegur Trench, a 800km-long deep cleft in the floor of the south Tasman Sea, formed by the subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate under the Pacific Plate.

The trench can be up to 6.3km deep.

Niwa will be working with the Chinese Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering to conduct deep dives with the ship’s submersibles.

The two-part 2025 voyage follows on from earlier work in 2022 with the same Chinese group in the Kermadec Islands.

A Niwa spokesman said the scientific work was part of an ongoing collaboration which provided New Zealand with scientific access to specialist equipment which allowed deep diving with manned/unmanned submersibles which could go down 4500m to 10,000m.

Niwa has two researchers on board each leg of the voyage.

Once the second leg of the voyage was completed, and once the data and images were processed, the groups would release their research findings along with never-before-seen images, the Niwa spokesman said.

The trench is named after Puysegur Point, a headland located in the far southwest of the South Island and is said to be the windiest place in New Zealand.

In a statement from the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the scientific expedition was to be conducted by a multinational group of researchers, comprising scientists from seven countries: China, New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, France, Malaysia and India.