Bay of Plenty Regional harbourmaster Carl Magazinovic has resigned ‘to pursue other employment opportunities', says BOPRC deputy CEO Eddie Grogan today.

Carl was placed on employment related leave about three weeks ago as a result of what SunLive understands are a private investigator's findings relating to the council contract with the council's mooring contractor.

Bay of Plenty Regional harbourmaster Carl Magazinovic has resigned.

'We can't really comment about anything further,” says Eddie.

'We are working on making sure that we have harbourmaster cover.”

Recently retired regional harbourmaster at Port Dampier in Western Australia, John Fewing, is acting regional harbourmaster for the next two weeks.

'We got him through Maritime NZ. He's only recently retired. Unfortunately we have only got him for a few weeks. But we are just making sure we have got cover because we are just coming into the busy season.”

Regional council staff are making the most of the opportunity to get a fresh perspective on the moorings issue, and take advantage of his experience, says Eddie.

'He's seen a lot of places and mooring issues seem to crop up wherever you go,” says Eddie.

Earlier this year council hired a private investigator to look into allegations by mooring owners that the mooring contract is being abused.

The investigation began after mooring owners aired their concerns at a regional council meeting in June.

Mooring owners allege the contractor Sea Quest Marine Ltd substituted the stipulated PWB Load chain for cheaper chain that rusts out quicker, requiring more frequent replacement.

The bylaw requires maintenance and inspections of moorings to be carried out every two years by a mooring inspector approved by the harbourmaster.

At present moorings may only be constructed, placed, maintained and inspected by a person who has been approved by the Bay of Plenty Regional Harbourmaster.

Sea Quest Marine Limited is the only approved mooring contractor, responsible for inspecting repairing replacing the 499 moorings in Whakatane, Ohiwa and Tauranga Harbours.

Mooring holder Neville Harris says the regional harbourmaster awarded two contracts without putting them to public tender; the harbour beacon maintenance contract, which was awarded to Sea Quest Marine – and the log contract – salvaging logs that fall into the harbour during log loading at the Port of Tauranga, says Neville.

SunLive has been unable to contact any regional council staff able to state whether or not the harbourmaster is able to award those contracts to anyone who is not an approved mooring contractor, or if they have to be put out for public tender.

In October the regional council undertook an audit of moorings, hiring a private investigator to inspect moorings, to photograph the chain and take a few chain links for further investigation if required.

In mid-October the regional council's manager of natural hazards Ken Tarboton said the results of the audit were expected to be with the council before the end of the month.

'The initial feedback is he can provide us with a pretty good report on whether they aren't, or are, (the correct chain) without having to send those samples off for testing and that he can provide us with that in the next week,” says Ken.

'If there are any inconsistencies then we may have to dig into that further, so it's really hard to tell when that will become public. The only thing that's public at the moment is we are doing that audit investigation. We are taking the allegations about incorrect chain being used pretty seriously.”

If the mooring chain used is not the stipulated brand and type of chain required to be used, the mooring contractor Seaquest Marine Ltd, will be given the opportunity to respond, says Ken.