The appeal against the decision to leave the remainder of the Rena wreck on Astrolabe/Otaiti Reef starts in the Environment Court today, and is set down for four weeks.

Three appeals are to be heard against an independent hearing panel's decision to accede to the Rena owners and insurers request to leave the remainder of the wreck on the Astrolabe Reef.

The appeals are by Ngai Te Hapu Incorporated, Te Runanga 0 Ngai Te Rangi Iwi Trust, and Nga Potiki a Tamapahore Trust.

The Rena struck Astrolabe Reef on October 5, 2011, and subsequently broke up. Much of the wreckage near the upper reef has been cleared in the years since by ongoing salvage operations, but the bulk of the aft section, the engine room, some of the accommodation block and a significant portion of the hull now lies in deep water at the base of the reef.

The owners and insurers sought consent to leave the remainder where it lies because of the increasing danger to the salvage contractors operating at about 50m depth.

Their claim that continuing salvage efforts will cause a great deal of damage to the reef itself was accepted by the hearings panel.

Ongoing salvage work will also see the public again refused access to the popular diving and fishing spot.

Public access to the reef resumed in early April 2016 after being restricted for five years during the Rena salvage operations.

Forest & Bird and Nga Hapu o Motiti want the exclusion zone against fishing maintained, but the request is facing legal hurdles that are yet to be decided.

Motiti-based Ngati te Hapu Incorporated's Cultural Values Assessment states the hapu's kaitiakitanga over the reef is the obligation of stewardship or guardianship.

It is an obligation passed from one generation to the next to look after the rohe resources of the people.

That responsibility is normally regarded as being to leave Te Taiao – the environment and its resources – in a condition better than that inherited by them, the obligation then passing to the next generation.

'The modern kaitiaki role has evolved to be more than it might have been in traditional times. Then as now the traditional view was about looking after the natural resources and environment within the traditional rohe. Now however there is an appreciation that there is a wider environmental obligation,” says the Cultural Values Assessment.

'Oil and other pollution from the Rena with its more than local impact is the perfect example of the need to broaden our kaitiaki role.

'In recent times we have had to share our reef resources with others who have come to know and respect Otaiti as we do. Until the Rena event, Otaiti held its own being neither over exploited nor abused and we believe that it has been shown proper deference by the recreational fishermen and divers who used to flock to the reef especially in the summer.

'Most of them are good – taking enough for a good feed but it is not possible for us to know for sure. But now we feel that a disregard is being shown to the way we look at the reef. The greed way in which some of the charter dive people latched onto the possibility that diving on the wreck might bring them more income is disappointing to us. We are starting to think that a time might be coming when some controls over the reef might be needed.”

'We regard the reef as a taonga and have a great reverence for it because while our crops and water supply might fail, until the Rena came, Otaiti has never failed us.”

The Hapu want to see an annual survey of fish in and around the reef so that we can know how our fish stocks are doing.

'We do not need the wreck as an artificial reef – we already had a reef. If you want to create a wreck dive site then take the Rena wreck elsewhere and sink it there

'We understand that the job can be done safely, just not quickly. We understand that damage might be done to the reef in the removal of the wreck. But our point is that its mauri can never be restored if the wreck is left there.

'We are told that cutting up the wreck for removal will release toxins from marine paint flakes into the marine environment. We do not see how not cutting it up and leaving the wreck in place where the paints must break down eventually and release the toxins is a better solution. We do know that if the paint flakes were flakes of gold each one would be recovered no problem.

'We would rather that the reef recovers from the damage of removal – and it will do – and restore its mauri to where it was before the Rena event, unimpeded by the presence of a foreign object.”