French pay Rainbow Warrior return visit

A French television crew went diving on the former Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in the Far North at the weekend.

The three-member French Overseas National Television (RFO) crew, from New Caledonia, spent two days filming around the sunken vessel, recording footage of nearby marine life.

Programme director Isobel Braouet said the unit planned to create a documentary feature around the Rainbow Warrior for showing on French National and New Caledonian television channels early in April.

She estimated that the potential viewing audience is between five and and six million in France and 250,000 in New Caledonia.

The film team will travel south to Auckland this week and will visit former Rainbow Warrior crew members on Waiheke Island.

The Rainbow Warrior was prominent in the campaign against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

It was blown up by French secret agents at its berth at the Port of Auckland in 1985.

Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira drowned after he went to retrieve his gear and a second bomb went off.

The vessel was later taken to Matauri Bay near the Cavalli Islands and sunk there as a recreational diving and tourist attraction.

Associate Tourism Minister, Dover Samuels, who lives at Matauri Bay and represents Northland Maori in Parliament, said the documentary would have huge tourism potential in terms of international exposure.