Debris from the Rena has reached beaches in the Coromandel. There are bags of milk powder, plastic and rope on the beaches and broken containers.
The sea around the Rena is white from broken bags of milk powder. There is also oil for about 3km around the ship.
It is now too dangerous to take containers off the broken stern of the ship. There are worries that this part of the ship will sink, taking many containers to the bottom of the sea. However, if the weather improves, it may be possible to drag the two halves of the ship to shallow water. This would make it easier to remove the containers.
Now a ship is using sonar equipment to find containers in the water so that other ships can enter and leave the Port of Tauranga safely.
Vocabulary
debris – pieces of rubbish from something that is broken e.g. after a fire or flood (French word so we don’t pronounce the final “s”)
reach – arrive
stern – back end of the ship; opposite is bow [bau]
drag – pull with difficulty
shallow – opposite is deep
sonar – sound
Grammar
Here is a useful structure: This would make it easier to…
The grammar is: this makes it easier / more difficult / harder to + verb