Policing out on Kiwi waters
Maritime units have been in action in seas around New Zealand for more than 100 years
As Senior Sergeant Dave Houston swam out into the dark waters at Makara in pursuit of a group of poachers, he started to wonder what he’d do if he caught up with them.
Still wearing his shoes, Houston had leapt in after the group of four when they fled into the waves after being caught with half a tonne of shucked paua.
“They stopped, because I used to be quite a good swimmer. I was like ‘uh oh, what do I do now?”
With a group of criminals beginning to circle him in the water in the dark, Houston realised he was not in a particularly strong position to take four people into custody.
“I said ‘you win’ and I just swam back to the shore.”
Police later tracked down one of the men and seized the paua and the boat, which turned out to be stolen.
It’s just one of the tales Houston likes to tell about his time in the Wellington Police Maritime Unit.
He’s been in the role for at least 20 years, in which time he’s attended his fair share of rescues — for humans and animals alike.
“There’s one where a dolphin, fishing line got around his tail . . . he was swimming around by the wharf. He’d been there for days and no one could do anything about trying to [help].
“I jumped in the water off one of the boats, had a knife with me, and I was in the water. The dolphin was just swimming around and around while I was in the water. I think he or she knew what I was trying to do.”
Eventually it swam close enough for Houston to cut the line off its tail. What do unit members do? Of course, the 12-person team at the Wellington unit have more to do than rescue marine animals and catch bad guys.
They work closely with other agencies on anything from search and rescue missions and dealing with accidents in the harbour to providing training and seminars on boat safety.
The Lady Elizabeth IV, an 18.5m catamaran, is designed so it can also be used by other agencies, such as Customs and the Ministry of Primary Industries.
Search and rescue is their “main bread and butter”. There were 128 of these callouts for the Wellington Maritime Unit in the 2016-17 financial year.
Houston is pleased the number is dropping — from 171 the year before and 191 the year before that.
“We find that people are complying with the lifejackets [rules], which is really good, it’s fantastic.”
Some of their callouts are from worried people who think they’ve spotted someone in the water.
“One person on the train . . . said they saw a person in the water and we went out and we found it and it was a log,” he said.
“It looked like a person, honestly it looked like a person . . . it was really freaky, it looked like it had limbs and everything.”
Other searches are for missing divers. Police can work out how far a person might have drifted in an hour, factoring in the wind and currents.
The unit once dropped a dummy in the water at Paekakariki, and in 30 hours it drifted 48km to Wellington. “People need to be aware these tides, they absolutely honk along there.”
The team was called out once to rescue someone at Sinclair Head, but while still on the way to the job, they spotted the woman drifting near Island Bay. “Someone looked out the window. ‘Oh, there she is.”’
The job is full of public relations, working with other police groups to train them for on-water operations, enforcing exclusion zones for boaties and dealing with marine crime, including thefts and dangerous boating.
There have been four accidents on the water so far this year involving boats, which Houston says is a lot compared with most years. Often one accident a year would be “pushing it”.
“It seems to be people failing to keep a good lookout, like what you’re supposed to do on a boat, which is fairly important . . . You can’t get complacent on the water because there’s other water users.”
One year a ski boat came “full noise” up on to the beach at Petone during a New Year’s concert, ending up in the speakers.
Another time a snorkeller was run over by a boatie who was not paying attention. The swimmer’s leg was sliced by the propellers.
“It’s a little bit concerning that people aren’t keeping a good lookout . . . Our business is to be the safest country in the world, and we want this to be the safest water in the world as well.”
NZ has only two specialist police maritime units. One is in Auckland and the other in Wellington.