Stewart and Sonja Goodsir were on the water heading home after a day's fishing when they noticed the smoke.

When a bedraggled and bewildered Jose Salvador Alvarenga washed up on a remote Pacific atoll many were sceptical of his tale - but it's been backed by scientists.

A man has been arrested for drink-driving just 15 minutes after police rescued him and his friend when their jetboat got into difficulty in Queenstown last night.

Twelve Kiwi students set off on Monday on a 13-day voyage to the Auckland Islands .

'When it first happened I was like, I'm not even getting in the bathtub again.' But surfer Darren Mills has changed his mind, after his shark encounter.

Friends of experienced diver Bruce Porter have reacted with shock to his death after being hit by a boat.

Dramatic details of surfer Darren Mills' lucky escape from a shark attack emerged yesterday, as the British immigrant began his recovery from serious injuries.

It was meant to be a leisurely float down a river. But two men needed rescuing overnight after their lilos ran out of deep water and they ended trudging down a riverbed.

Half an hour before Fiona Gooder died while trying to save her foster daughter at a Northland beach, she sent her husband a text saying she "was in paradise".

Tired, panicking and gulping sea water, a grandfather struggled to hold on to his 8-year-old granddaughter in strong currents at an East Auckland beach yesterday.

A Mexican fisherman who says he drifted for months across the Pacific Ocean before washing up on a remote Marshall Islands atoll is on his way home.

A man is missing and another is fighting for his life after they fell from a waterfall south of Murchison yesterday.

The sole survivor of a boat capsize in Foveaux Strait which claimed the lives of eight people heard the screams of the only child on board just after a massive wave swamped the vessel in the middle of the night, a court has heard.

A New Zealander who survived being shipwrecked in shark-infested Fijian waters has lost part of his arm in an accident on board a foreign fishing vessel.

The skipper of a boat that sank in Foveaux Strait resulting in the deaths of eight people made a catalogue of errors, the trial of his widow heard yesterday.

The widow of the Easy Rider skipper faces trial today over the vessel's deadly sinking in Foveaux Strait nearly two years ago.

A diving incident near Wellington has claimed the life of a man in his early thirties.

Footage of a fatal crash between a dinghy and a yacht in the Bay of Islands has been given to authorities to determine who was at fault.

A 68-year-old man is dead after he was thrown from his dinghy following a collision with a yacht in Northland today.

Police in North Otago are "desperately" seeking witnesses to help shed light on how a man was left paralysed for life after becoming tangled in a boating rope.

One person is dead and another critically injured after a high speed crash on a river in the Hawkes Bay.

A police search yesterday failed to find 40-year-old Aucklander Peato Samele Ilalio, who is presumed drowned after he went missing while fishing from Kauri Point.

The parents of an American teenager missing at sea on the stricken yacht Nina are vowing to stay Downunder until she is found alive.