By NAOMI LARKIN
Police investigating the theft of 100-year-old treasure from the Kelly Tarlton Tui shipwreck museum at Waitangi are looking for former crew member Keith Anthony McEwen.
Constable Russell Price of Kaikohe said yesterday that the 23-year-old, also known as Keith Donald, had been working on the Tui when the collection disappeared.
He had not been seen since.
The irreplaceable collection of maritime gold jewellery and coins went missing from the permanently moored vessel on Saturday.
Staff of the Tui discovered the theft from the below-deck museum shortly before 8 pm while visitors were still on board.
Constable Price said police wanted information on Mr McEwen's whereabouts and to hear from anyone who had been offered gold jewellery or coins.
The treasure was salvaged over many years by the late Kelly Tarlton, the diver and treasure hunter. The items missing from a glass-covered vault include some of the Rothschild jewellery lost when the Tasmania sank in raging seas off the Mahia Peninsula near Gisborne in 1897.
Mr Tarlton's widow, Rosemary, said a considerable collection of greenstone had also gone.
Police hunt Tarlton crewman
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