Four people have reported seeing a UFO fitting the same general description over the northern harbour on three separate occasions during the last year.

The sightings, beginning in August and occurring every four or so months, all feature a hovering, fast moving object with flashing lights that change colour.

The witnesses contacted Sun Media after a kayaker's experience on the harbour last month was published in The Weekend Sun.

While kayaking between Omokoroa and Matakana on May 21 the man encountered a strange, silent craft with a white light that appeared to be hovering and changing from red to blue.

Since then, two more stories have emerged.

On August 28, 2012 at 7.50pm a woman at Bridgeman Lane, north of Katikati, saw a hovering object about a kilometre away that had bright flashing lights changing colour.

The object remained stationery and when she tried several times to call her neighbour her phone did not work.

Months later, on December 9, 2012 at 9.42pm two men fishing near Motuhoa Island in the harbour nearly ran into an object they say flew away at speed.

One of the fishermen took photos of their encounter.

'It was moving pretty fast man, it was all going on pretty quick. If I'd had this phone I've got now I could peel out 10 photos pretty quickly, says one of the fishermen, who wants to be known as Teve.

'When I saw it first I didn't know what it was, but when it took off vertically I knew what it was and I grabbed the phone.

'The only reason I was a little bit onto what it was is because my mother had an encounter back in the 50s at Waihi, so it's something I have always been a little bit aware of.”

Teve and a friend were fishing near Motuhoa Island but headed towards Omokoroa when it grew dark.

They were heading from Motuhoa back to Plummer's Point, and started speeding up at the Te Puna/Snodgrass Road side.

Teve says it was a 'really calm night” and they came around the island at about 15 knots and saw the object directly ahead.

'This thing would have been probably four metres in diameter by about probably two and a half/three metres in height. This thing was sitting about 4.5 metres off the water.

'When I saw this thing initially, I thought this thing is a yacht with lights on the mast, and I'm looking for navigation lights on it, but it's got no nav lights on it.

'Then all of a sudden, it was at a stand-still. It just went vertically into the air at a horrendous speed. It must have gone up about 100 feet then it shot off horizontally to the left, back down towards Motuhoa Island, then it swung left again round to Matakana then stopped right outside Omokoroa. Just bang – stopped.

'Within two seconds we were on the mark where it was. I killed the boat, and there was not a ripple in the water. There was no sound of propulsion, nothing…no noise, no wake, absolutely nothing.”

That was 9.42pm. The pair drifted and watched for about 15 minutes but it remained in a stationary and silent hover, sitting above Omokoroa/Matakana.

'If you were standing at the wharf looking toward Pahoia way, it was sort of in that area just above Matakana.”

They went down the Te Puna channel and resumed fishing and when they came back round the corner about 1am, it was still in the sky.

'It had moved round a bit towards Omokoroa, but it was still in the sky.”

Teve says there were a couple of other boats out fishing near Motuhoa and he can't believe no one else saw it.

'The light it was pouring out was horrendous. You couldn't have not seen it if you were looking.

'As this thing took off the lights got really, really, bright. I don't know how it was powered, but the faster it was going, the more energy it was generating, the brighter the light was.

'It's almost like three lights became one when it was under acceleration. But when it was sitting it had three: left, right on the bottom and one in the centre.

'And I have never seen anything accelerate the way this thing did from a stand-still to the speed this thing was doing in like a point of a second. Nothing on this world does that.”

Teve has been fishing on the harbour at night time for years. 'I know my way around where the shallows are where not to go. It's not like it was the first time out there, and I have never seen anything like that out there.”

In August 2012, the woman, named Lynn, was housesitting north of Katikati and experienced an object with blue and red flashing lights similar to the kayaker's description in May.

Lynn had just put the cat out when she noticed something flashing brightly. About a kilometre away she saw an object hovering just above treetop level.

She says it had bright flashing lights which were changing colour and it stayed very still all the time she observed it.

She rang her neighbour several times on both the landline and cell phone, but neither worked.

'I just kept watching this craft to see where it went, how big it was and how it just hovered and flashed very bright white, red and blue rotating lights, hovered and seemed to be looking for something under its very large strobe light protruding from underneath it.

Lynn watched for about 30 minutes before it 'sped away” towards Waihi Beach.

'I don't have a problem with what I saw and have seen a few similar crafts since, between Waihi, Matakana and Katikati as well as over Te Puke.

'Either we are being watched by sophisticated non-Western military spies, or someone is making illegal planes/hovercraft for whatever reason and frightening New Zealanders in the process.

'The interesting thing is they appear only at night and don't show up during the daytime. My concern is some of the ones I saw were in the vicinity of Tauranga plane flight paths, did not make any sound like aeroplanes or helicopters do, are very fast at disappearing and leave no traces.”

Lynn claims to have seen three different crafts: in September she saw one near Kauri Point that matched the description of the one Teve saw.

'I don't know what's going on out there. I have my theories. I'm not sure I believe in out of space people.”

She believes the crafts are more likely to be from Earth than not.

'I'm sceptical about the possibility of ‘spacemen' because I haven't seen one, and until I do I wouldn't be able to say I did.”