Examinations are continuing today into the wreckage of a car linked to missing Invercargill boy Mike Zhao-Beckenridge.
The blue Volkswagen Touareg - owned by Mike's step-father John Beckenridge - was hauled from the waters of Curio Bay yesterday afternoon, after 46 days in the water.
Raging seas off the rugged South Catlins coast had prevented its recovery until yesterday afternoon.
Police spokesman Nic Barkley today said further examinations would be conducted on the vehicle, and police would be ''keeping the family up to date as much as we can as we progress''.
Yesterday, moments after a helicopter lifted the SUV from the water - which was finally calm - and loaded it on to a commercial fishing boat, a rainbow appeared.
Police had found the Queenstown man's vehicle below the 88m cliff in a small rocky unnamed bay next to Blue Cod Bay near Curio Bay at the end of March.
Police have been looking for Mr Beckenridge since Mike (11) was reported missing by his mother on March 13.
Police believe the boy and his estranged stepfather were in the vehicle when it drove off the top of the cliff at high speed on March 22.
But they have not been able to confirm their theory.
Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Bowman, of Invercargill, said he spent Tuesday with the boy's family before attempting to recover the vehicle - a ''major piece'' of what is still a missing persons case.
Yesterday was difficult for the family, he said.
''It's been a hard, hard day for them.''
ESR scientists were on the boat as the vehicle was pulled out of the water by helicopter and began their investigation as it made its journey to Bluff before being transported to Invercargill for a ''thorough'' forensic examination.
Det Snr Sgt Bowman could not say whether bodies were in the vehicle as it was pulled from the water, or what clues as to the pair's whereabouts the vehicle might yield.
On March 30, police divers suspended an underwater camera from a helicopter above the dangerous bay to identify the vehicle and reported ''initial observations'' that the vehicle was empty.
Mr Barkley said police would not comment further on what had been learnt by pulling the vehicle from the sea until after the examination because of ''the extensiveness of what we'll need to go into with the state of the vehicle''.
Police had piled debris from the vehicle on the beach at the end of March, and after weeks of being submerged, the vehicle had deteriorated further and a wheel had washed up on the beach.
About four hours before police extracted the vehicle, what appeared to be a door was taken on board the waiting fishing boat, and weeds appeared to be growing from the chassis of the upturned vehicle when it was hoisted aboard.
In the morning, strong offshore winds and rain lashed police, search and rescue members and media, who stood on the cliffs watching the police divers work below, but, essentially for the operation, the water remained calm.
The owner of the property, Paul Watson, said a week ago 10m waves were crashing over where the vehicle lay underwater, but yesterday was a ''one in 100'' day when the sea was virtually flat.
Police divers entered the water at 9am yesterday to discover the vehicle had shifted from where it was first found five weeks ago.
The vehicle had moved into shallower water and the initial plan of attaching air bags and floating the vehicle to the surface was abandoned.
Mr Barkley said police knew they were working in a very small window of opportunity and it was a ''roller coaster'' as they adjusted plans. A helicopter on standby was called to lift the vehicle, but managed only to drag it upturned towards the rocky beach.
As the clouds began to part, four large buoys were strapped to the bottom of the vehicle and about 2pm it was towed by the helicopter out to the waiting fishing boat.
The forensic examination of the vehicle is expected to last a few days.
Det Snr Sgt Bowman said police were continuing to exhaust ''all avenues'' in the missing persons case. He said police would sit down to discuss whatever was found with Mike's family.
''There's a number of things we still have to do before we decide where this inquiry will go,'' he said.
Mr Beckenridge, an Australian citizen of Swedish descent, is also known as John Robert Lundh, Knut Goran Roland Lundh and John Bradford and was in breach of a parenting order when he allegedly abducted Mike.
Mr Barkley said there were many possible reasons a person would have aliases and police could not confirm why he used different names.
In March, Detective Sergeant Mark McCloy, of Southland, told the Otago Daily Times he was not aware of any criminal record associated with Mr Beckenridge's aliases.
