Plans to begin removing the Rena's sunken accommodation section are on hold as rough conditions meant today's salvage operation could not go ahead.

Rena recovery spokesperson Hugo Shanahan says weather has halted Resolve salvors' plans to start the underwater cutting operation to lift the first 350 tonne section of the sunken aft section today.

The remains of the Rena at Astrolabe Reef.

With winds currently above 20 knots out at sea well above initial forecasts for seven knots, Hugo says it is too unsafe for salvors.

'The forecast swells that were coming through this weekend were likely to come up a lot sooner than that so they decided to postpone it and wait for this weather and swells to come through and then re-assess,” says Hugo.

The containership Rena struck the Astrolabe Reef, about 25km off the coast of Tauranga, on October 5, 2011. The ship leaked more than 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the environment and broke up, spilling containers and cargo into the ocean, washing up on beaches across the Bay of Plenty.

Hugo cannot give an estimate of the time needed to complete the work, but if there is a fine stretch of weather and sea conditions salvors will be able to finish the job.

'We will be able to tell you once it's done.”

Last June, the owners and insurers of the ship made the announcement salvors will cut the four-storey accommodation block from the submerged aft section and remove it from the Astrolabe Reef.

In recent months the specialist salvage dive team have been burning rigging holes and clearing internal pathways to enable approximately 2000 metres of large industrial three inch wire chains to effectively saw the house into two sections.

Rena salvors will cut the sunken block in two 350 tonne sections by an oblique chain parallel to the main deck by the crane barge RMG500 and transferred to the deck barge RMG1000.

Once each section is cut away, it will be lifted onto a barge for transport to Port of Tauranga – to be dismantled for scrap and, where possible, recycling.