A floating container seen north of Astrolabe Reef by the crew of a fishing boat was taken in tow yesterday.

The container with a cargo of milk powder was towed by Braemar Howells' New Zealand partner Unimar tug and hitched up to an anchor point off Motiti Island.

Salvage cranes lift containers and debris the forward section of Rena. Photo: Smit and Svitzer.

A transponder was then attached before the container sunk at its mooring.

Braemar Howells Operations Manager Lloyd Neil says intercepting and securing the container was accomplished thanks to a combined effort of the Svitzer-Smit team, Maritime New Zealand, and Braemar/Unimar.

'The recovery was mounted soon after the fishing boat reported the sighting to our 0800 debris number,” says Neil.

'It demonstrates both effective communication systems and good working relationships between all the parties. We work extremely well together under instruction from Rena's owners who continue to follow developments closely.”

The Braemar/Unimar team also deployed tugs and barges today, using nets to recover loose wool that floated from the wreck in the large swells this week.

The weather at the reef this week also disrupted salvage activities, with the crane barge Smit Borneo forced to remain on standby yesterday.

Salvage cranes lift containers and debris the forward section of Rena. Photo: Smit and Svitzer.

Changes in the conditions on Friday are expected to allow Smit Borneo to move closer to the wreck today.

Heavy swells on Thursday flooded the breached holds in the bow section, washing some bags of milk powder into the sea. Many of the bags were recovered by small craft assisting the salvors, but some burst and lost their contents to the sea.

Otherwise the salvage joint venture between Svitzer and Smit made good progress recovering cargo and containers from the wreck this week with more than 50 containers and a significant amount of aluminium ingots and other pieces of debris and cargo removed.

All the hatch covers have been removed from the bow section.

Salvors this week began cutting up and removing sections of the Rena bow structure. Divers have been cutting and clearing debris from the bow section, and removing aluminium ingots from the seabed.

Winds of up to 25 knots are expected at the Astrolabe Reef today, predicted to ease to 5-10 knots Saturday morning, and persisting through until Monday.

The current sea state of around 2-2.5m is expected to ease today, dropping to between 1-1.5m by tonight.

Braemar contractors are continuing the removal of plastic beads from Coromandel beaches with about 90 bags containing mainly beads removed on Saturday, with the majority collected from Tairua's inner harbour.

A salvage crane lifts the last hatch cover from the forward section of Rena. Photo: Smit and Svitzer

Teams are working at Sailors' Grave and Otara Bay this week. More beads have been found on the beaches where they have been steered by wind direction or lifted to the surface by high tides. It means the clean-up teams are constantly revisiting beaches.

Breamar Howells has also had a good week with container recovery. In the last week 81 containers have been recovered from the wreck of the Rena and brought to port. A total of 896 containers have been retrieved.

Matakana Island operations have progressed well and the large bead impacted areas at Tank Road are now clear, and beads are being vacuumed from the dunes and vegetation along the shoreline.

Recovery and surveys on Motiti Island were postponed due to the sea conditions but operations to recover wreckage and debris will resume shortly.

Members of the public are encouraged to keep reporting any sightings of oil to the oil spill response hotline on 0800 OIL SPILL (0800 645 774).

The oil spill response has been reduced from a Tier 3, or national level, to Tier 2, or regional level, response. Any queries about the oil spill response should now be directed to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.