Six people who went missing overnight in Fiji’s southern Lau Group have been found alive after a Royal New Zealand Air Force crew picked their small boat out of a heavy sea on Friday evening, ending a search that ranged across thousands of square kilometres of open water.
The group left Namuka island about 10am on Thursday in a white half-cabin fibreglass boat powered by a 40 horsepower outboard motor, bound for Fulaga. Three boats made the crossing together that morning and two of them arrived. When the third had still not turned up by the evening, the alarm was raised with the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Fiji, FBC News reported.
Conditions in that part of the Lau Group were poor. Strong winds and rough to very rough seas hampered the search from the outset, and the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji asked mariners in the area to keep a close watch for the missing boat while urging skippers to heed weather warnings before setting out.
The Fiji Navy coordinated the response with the rescue coordination centre, drawing in vessels already working nearby and two aircraft. One was a chartered Northern Air Embraer EMB-110 flying as a Navy search and rescue flight. The other was a New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon from No. 5 Squadron, which local authorities asked to join the effort. The Fiji Sun reported the search area covered about 4,377 square nautical miles, or roughly 15,000 square kilometres of ocean.
The Poseidon crew worked the area for about six hours, running a detailed radar sweep before switching to a visual search. At 5.30pm on Friday they found what they were looking for, a small boat about 14.6 nautical miles, or roughly 27 kilometres, southwest of Vanuavatu.
Flight Lieutenant Holly Graham, the tactical coordinator on the aircraft, said the crew were working against the weather the whole time. “The weather was challenging with strong winds and 3.5m swells creating salt spray which decreased visibility,” she told 1News.
Once the boat was pinned down, the Republic of Fiji Navy Ship Savenaca, which was already operating near the search area, was diverted to the position. It reached the six people and took them aboard shortly after 8pm.
“It was a long day, but the crew was delighted with the outcome,” Flight Lieutenant Graham said. “Our thanks to all who assisted, particularly the crew of RFNS Savenaca. Our best wishes to the survivors and their families.”
All six were taken to Suva for medical assessment before being reunited with their families, fijivillage reported. The Fiji Navy thanked the New Zealand Air Force, New Zealand’s rescue coordination centre, Northern Air, the Fiji Police Force, the Maritime Safety Authority of Fiji and the island communities at both ends of the crossing, and said the operation showed the value of regional partnerships and cooperation between agencies.
It is the second time in about two months that a New Zealand Poseidon has found people adrift in Fijian waters. In June, a P-8A that was on its way to a search in Kiribati and stopping in Fiji to refuel was asked by Maritime New Zealand’s rescue coordination centre to look for a small craft off the Fijian coast. The crew found it with five people aboard, and RFNS Savenaca picked them up. The same aircraft then carried on and located a Kiribati fishing boat with three people aboard that had lost engine power, making it eight people found in a single day.
After that June operation, Acting Air Component Commander Group Captain Brett Clayton said the outcome came down to preparation on several fronts. “Thanks to the professionalism and readiness of the personnel involved in the air, on the sea and on land, the sailors on this vessel will make it home to their families,” he said in a New Zealand Defence Force statement at the time.
The aircraft doing this work were not bought with island search and rescue in mind. New Zealand has four Boeing P-8A Poseidons, all delivered between late 2022 and mid 2023 to replace the ageing P-3K2 Orions under a project costed at about $2.3 billion. They are built for long range maritime patrol and anti-submarine work, and they fly out of Ohakea with No. 5 Squadron. The radar and camera systems designed to pick out very small contacts on a big ocean turn out to be just as good at finding a five metre open boat in a swell, and in practice a large share of the fleet’s flying hours in the Pacific goes on humanitarian tasks rather than military ones.
For Fiji, the value of that reach is straightforward. The Lau Group is a scattered chain of small islands strung out across a long stretch of ocean well east of Suva, and small open boats are the everyday link between them. A crossing that goes wrong in worsening weather leaves searchers with an enormous area to cover and a target that is almost invisible from sea level. Aircraft close that gap quickly, and New Zealand’s own rescue region is among the largest in the world, which is why the Air Force is regularly asked to help neighbours who do not have that kind of aircraft of their own.
The missing boat itself has not been described in detail beyond its size and engine, and Fijian authorities have not said publicly what went wrong on the crossing or how the six people fared during their night at sea.
