Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 - Tonight on Sunday ` an ocean invasion that could leave this country dead in the water. - It's everywhere, isn't it? - Yeah. I didn't expect it to be like that. - Yeah, heartbreaking, really. - There's this silent killer spreading out of sight. - An underwater emergency. - It's gonna be everywhere in New Zealand, wiping out a multi-billion-dollar industry. - Do you think it's being taken seriously enough? - No. If we do nothing... it's over. (SIRENS WAIL) - It's very hard to describe the pain, the noise and everything. He wanted to stay until he killed everyone. - And the day that left us speechless. - What happened on 15 March, it's beyond words. - Now ` a very special collaboration helping victims find their voice. - (SINGS IN ARABIC) - Music can say things that words can't. Music connects people. - Plus ` a decade of despair. - They promised. 'We'll find the plane,' you know? 'We'll do everything that we can. We won't give up.' - The misery and the mystery of MH370. - Where the right spot is ` if we knew that, we would've searched there. - But 10 years on ` a breakthrough? - It was a wing off a bloody aircraft. - Kia ora. I'm Miriama Kamo. It's one of the biggest ever threats to our marine life, and the wider effects could be devastating. Invasive caulerpa, also known as killer algae, grows fast, smothering everything on the seabed. It kills sea life, and it could do the same to our fishing and tourism industries. But the government says this toxic weed can't be eradicated, so what does this mean for our country? Here's Conor Whitten. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - CONOR WHITTEN: Aotea, Great Barrier Island, out on the edge of the Hauraki Gulf, where the coastlines are rugged and the people resilient. They got through COVID, but now there's caulerpa. - Yeah, really tricky. I mean, around here, we really don't like the C words at all, you know? - Orla Cummiskey owns the Irish pub at Tryphena, one of the island's most popular bays. - You look out there yourself, and you'll see there's only a handful of boats in the harbour. We have lost all of our tourism from boaties completely. - There will be a point if we don't have the tourism, we're gonna walk out. - That's really hard. - Yeah, it's tough. It's really, really tough. - Rochelle Duncan runs the cafe next door. - We take one week at a time now, and I'm at a point where I don't even know now if I'm gonna survive the winter. - Invasive caulerpa was found here in 2021. Most likely, it arrived by boat, so anchoring's been banned on almost all the west coast. Tourism and the sea life are being strangled by a creeping green menace. - There's this silent killer operating and spreading out there under the water, out of sight. - What makes this seaweed so dangerous? - The key element is its speed of growth. So, it grows very, very fast. Caulerpa forms these thick and tangled meadows or mats, and basically, it smothers the sea life. - Emeritus Professor Barry Scott has spent a lifetime in environmental science, and he knows a thing or two about invasive threats. So this impacts the whole food chain? - Indeed, it has the potential. It's certainly the most serious marine incursion we've had in New Zealand, and we're totally unprepared for it. - Now the fear is ` who's next? - We're urging all of the boaties to check their anchor chains... - Yes. - ...and their fishing lines. - Russell, Bay of Islands, our boating mecca ` thousands flock here every year. So the locals can't afford to take any chances. Invasive caulerpa has arrived here too. - If you pull up anything green, here's a compostable doggy bag. - Yeah. - Just throw it in there. - It's all hands on deck for every boatie. - You're Blair Tuke, the sailor dude. - Yeah. - Good on you, man. - Thank you, man. - Olympic gold medallist, America's Cup winner ` in sailing, Blair Tuke is as big as it gets. And for him, the caulerpa crisis is personal. - The Bay of Islands is home, but, you know, to have this happening in New Zealand, you know, really scares me. - He's travelled the world on the water, and it's opened his eyes to the ocean's decline. So Blair and Pete Burling, his perennial teammate, started a charity called Live Ocean to campaign to protect the seas. - New Zealand's an island nation. We're absolutely dependent on the ocean. So, you know, we need to have a healthy ocean that's full of life. And if this seaweed comes in, this monocrop takes over, that won't be the case. - With Blair's dad, Andy, at the helm, we're off to see it, 45 minutes by boat from Russell in remote Omakiwi Bay. Blair knows it's been hit hard by caulerpa, but he hasn't seen it for himself until now. Is this the first time you're gonna see this thing face to face? - Yeah, it's gonna be pretty confronting, but I also wanna see it firsthand and get a real grasp on what it can do to the ocean floors. - And help show the rest of New Zealand too. - Yeah, it's an incredibly important story to get out. As with so much of what happens below the surface, it's really hard to bring people's eyes in it and for people to connect to it. - And we're in. Take a dive below the surface, and the scale of the outbreak is instantly clear. A few years ago, this seabed was teeming with life ` scallops, kelp, crabs and fish. Now there's nothing but a toxic carpet. I thought it was all gonna be connected down to the sand, but it's connected just together. It's... It's like a wavy mat that's just completely... There's nothing under it. (BLEEP) - A thick, smothering mat of caulerpa... stretching as far as we can see. It's everywhere, isn't it? - Yeah. I didn't expect it to be like that. - Did you see anything else alive down there? I didn't. - Yeah, it was` it was terrifying, the, um... Seeing what I saw, it was ocean floor just completely smothered by this seaweed that, you know, shouldn't be there. It's like a thick rug that you see in your house, just all over the... over the sand, you know. Absolutely no chance for any sort of marine life or shellfish or anything to be living there. It was, um, yeah, heartbreaking, really. - This is our food cupboard for all of our whanau that live at home. See, we're really worried. - Glenys Papuni is from Ngati Kuta, the local hapu, who fear their way of life is at risk. - We've always been able to come and get kai from the moana. And if we can't do that, then for a lot of us, we can't live here. We can't` Life is not sustainable. - California spent millions wiping out one incursion; now it's facing another. But no one wants to be the next Monaco. Caulerpa took hold there in the '80s. The effects were devastating ` sea life stocks cut in half in just six years. - It spread from a very small patch to tens, hundreds, thousands and now hundreds of thousands of hectares and just huge impact on the native biodiversity and abundance. - Do you think it's being taken seriously enough? - (SIGHS) No. That's the short answer. No, but if we don't do anything, we'll` there'll be no fish. There'll be no kaimoana and all the marine mammals and all of those kinds of things. We have to do something. Otherwise, if we do nothing... it's over. - Coming up ` - Yeah, I think the response has been totally inadequate. - It's an invasive species. It needs to be absolutely eradicated and wiped out. - But can caulerpa be stopped? What is plan B? - You never know what plan B is until plan A doesn't work. (SIX60'S 'DON'T FORGET YOUR ROOTS') - The waters off the coast of Great Barrier Island, a playground for all kinds of natural life ` hammerhead sharks prowling for prey; stingrays sheltering in the shallows; and, gliding majestically up to the surface, a giant Bryde's whale. It's no wonder when Maori came to Aotearoa, the island was among the first spots they made home. - How many hundreds of years do you want me to go back? We're talking 700, 800 years... at least. We're Ngatiwai. We're people of the sea. It's in our name. - Ngati Rehua Ngatiwai ki Aotea are the people here. Kaumatua Syd Davies lives at Kawa Marae. - So the moana, it is beyond special. It is our livelihood. You know, it's our food basket. And as kaitiaki, we... it is our responsibility to ensure the continuance of that for future generations. - The moana is now under threat from caulerpa. What did you think when you heard this invasive caulerpa was here? - I knew straight away that we were in for a real problem. - Okupu Bay, Great Barrier, is caulerpa ground zero, the first place the invasive pest was found. It's been growing for years here, and it's taken over, even worse than what we found in the Bay of Islands ` forests of seaweed, thriving but lifeless, a watery wasteland on the ocean floor. - It's really strong here, and you can literally watch it grow. And it just devastates and just wipes out the seabed. - When you see it up close, you can grasp the scale of it. Caulerpa just blankets all of this bay. And from 44ha less than three years ago, now it covers more than 1000 rugby fields up and down the coast of Great Barrier Island, and it's growing bigger every day. - So, there's lots of it been washed up recently. - 'Out to sea and on to beaches.' It's one thing to see it, but now you can feel it. I mean, this is so dense, isn't it? - It's extraordinarily dense. - It feels kind of like AstroTurf. - Sure does. It's almost synthetic. AstroTurf ` what a great description. - 'Emeritus Professor Barry Scott of the Aotea Great Barrier Environmental Trust.' How fast would it grow to a length like this? - There were just small patches of this in Tryphena; three months later, those 1m2 had... grown to 2000m2. Very, very rapid growth. - If the caulerpa was on Takapuna, washing up on Takapuna Beach, there'd be all sorts of things happening right now. But because it's over here on Aotea... You know, it's a little island out in the` on the gulf, you know. Who cares? You know, there's only... you know, 800, 900 people that live there. Nah. - Takapuna could be next, on Auckland's North Shore. Take a look at how caulerpa's grown already. From the first detection at Great Barrier, it spread through the Hauraki Gulf and beyond ` to the Coromandel and the Bay of Islands. It's thought exotic caulerpa could grow anywhere from Cape Reinga to East Cape. It's now on Waiheke, Auckland's doorstep. How do you put an economic value on what's at stake here? - I'm not an economist. I can't do that. But the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research come up with a natural capital value of between 40 billion to 100 billion. That's quite a sum and an annual potential income... of around $5 billion. That's just for the Hauraki Gulf. - So that $5 billion a year is at risk? - Potentially. And it could be more. If you get it into the Port of Auckland, he said you'll then be exporting caulerpa, and that'll have huge economic, reputational damage. I know the Californians, for one, won't want ships out of Auckland carrying caulerpa. - Those are huge consequences. - Indeed. - When caulerpa was discovered on Great Barrier in 2021, the Ministry for Primary Industries acted quickly to put restrictions on the movement of boats. Below the surface, however, there's been little action. MPI sought advice on eradication. Their expert report said it couldn't be done. So the government threw in the towel? - They threw in the towel. I think the community here was really let down. The response should have been something akin to an oil slick. - It all feels familiar for Ngati Rehua. - We knew we were gonna have problems, given the history of the government... and what they'd done with other things ` for example, uh, kauri ora, or what they refer to as kauri dieback. We've discovered that here in '72... and it was 20, 30, 40 years before they started doing anything. If they don't do anything about the caulerpa, yeah, it's gonna be everywhere in New Zealand, wiping out a multi-billion-dollar industry. - Up in the Bay of Islands, Glenys Papuni and Ngati Kuta decided they had to do something ` fast. What do you think when you look at what's happened at Aotea Great Barrier? - Sad. Sad and mamae for them, because it's... It's way worse for them, because they haven't done anything about it, but that's been the motivation behind getting our waters clear of it. And I think that we're right behind with innovation. We're right behind using technology` modern technology to deal with those things in our water, so, yeah. - The result? An unlikely alliance between iwi, council, MPI and a marine engineering firm. Do you think you can get rid of it? - I think we can give it a good go, yeah. - Andrew Johnson is a local ocean engineer. - Well, we've never dealt with a problem like this, but we put our thinking caps on and came up with a tool that we thought could work. - Within mere months, they'd designed and built it ` a crane-operated suction dredge. It's a giant vacuum. - Yeah, it's a giant vacuum, very similar to the powerhead you might see on your vacuum with the rotating brushes when you're trying to clean stubborn carpet or something like that. - Has this ever been done before? - As far as I'm told, nowhere else in the world has tried to remove caulerpa on the scale we're talking about. Yeah. - Blair Tuke's hopeful, but it's still just a trial. - Truthfully, I did have some concerns. You know, that suction dredge, you're gonna be sucking up everything that's on the ocean floor. But after seeing, you know, what caulerpa does and how it just completely smothers everything, there's no scallop, or there's no pipi that could be under this, because it's just so dense. - If it succeeds, it could help elsewhere. There's a lot riding on one machine. - If it doesn't work, then` then we've got a problem. We've gotta review the situation and work out what plan B is. - What is plan B? - You never know what plan B is until plan A doesn't work, is what I've found down the farm. - 'Andrew Hoggard is the new biosecurity minister.' How long have you been a farmer? - Oh, most of my life. - So you know about pests? - I know about pests... and weeds. - You know about Mycoplasma bovis? - Yeah. - Why aren't we taking this as seriously as that? - It is a lot easier dealing with terrestrial than underwater ` and that's massively challenging. You know, you look at caulerpa ` you know, compare it to the Californian thistles. It's really easy to drive a truck over a paddock and spray those Cali' thistles, but underwater, so much harder, so much more difficult, more costly, more challenging. - Last month, the government announced $5 million to fund the trials and more surveillance. - If they'd started two and a half years ago, the amount of money that we would have needed back then would have done the job. Now you're looking probably 100 times that amount. - Two years ago, Biosecurity New Zealand decided that we couldn't eradicate this. - Yeah. - Was that a mistake? - Well, I don't think we can eradicate it ` and that's the key thing. I mean, the advice they've had from overseas experts is that that's impossible, but what we do have a shot at is really knocking it down. - It's no good just working on it to control it. That's nothing. It's an invasive species. It needs to be absolutely eradicated and wiped out, not controlled. - Every day, the crisis grows. - It's a huge biosecurity risk to New Zealand, and I think the response has been totally inadequate. - What's at stake here? - Well, if we sit back and do nothing and let this take over, then... you know... the Kiwi way of life. - Well, communities aren't giving up just yet. On Waiheke Island, iwi Ngati Paoa have joined forces with a carpet company. They're trying to smother invasive caulerpa with wool mats on the sea floor. As for advice to boaties ` check your anchor and clean your gear. E whai ake nei ` courage amidst carnage. - Hussein acted very bravely in his last moments. - He died as a hero. - And a very special tribute to the lives lost on March 15. - We need these, um, reminders that help us find peace and unity. - Hoki mai ano. On March 15 2019, 51 innocent lives were taken by one hateful man. The Christchurch mosque attacks were horrific and sparked an outpouring of love for our Muslim communities. This year, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra wants to see that compassion and unity reignited across Aotearoa. They're using music to tell the stories in a way we've never heard before. Here's Mava Moayyed. (PLAYERS WARM UP) MAVA MOAYYED: Woodwinds... brass... percussion and strings... each lovely on their own. All together, though... (ORCHESTRA PLAY SOARING MUSIC) ...magic. It's a rousing harmony of sound. And that's the thing about sounds; they can uplift us and inspire us. (SIREN WAILS) Or they can haunt us. - The shots was very loud. Yeah. There was a lot of screaming, especially from the people that got` that got shot. When I turned... When I turned back, I saw some of them with too much blood. - This is the first time Abdelilah Rharrabti has spoken publicly about that day. - It's very hard to describe... the pain and the images and the noise and everything. What actually` What happened in 15th March, it's beyond words. - Abdelilah was born in a small Moroccan town close to the border of Algeria. - We... We lived a really good childhood. You know? The neighbours were the friends. The streets are full of people, and a lot of movements. And my brother used to bring, like, some cassettes, the old cassettes... - Yeah. - ...to our house. So, he used to play nasheeds, which is Islamic songs, and I loved them. Bilal. - Then another love. 11 years ago, he married a Kiwi, moved to Christchurch and is now dad to three kids. - So when I came here, it's a different world. Like... I was looking, 'Where is people? Where are they? (MAVA CHUCKLES) 'I can't see any people.' Not like back to home. - 19,000km away from Morocco, Abdelilah found comfort in music, singing at local events. - That time, we needed a drummer, cos we were just doing vocals. We need the rhythm. We need the beat. - He met 35-year-old Hussein Al-Umari. - From the first day I met him, he's such a lovely brother, yeah? We have some Moroccan tea with them, and they loved it. Every time he comes, 'I'm coming just for this tea!' (CHUCKLES) Yeah. - So, Hussein used to... play the tabla, which is the Arabic drums. Yeah, yeah. And I play the keyboard and the oud. Or at least I try. (PLAYS MELODY) - Aya is Hussein's younger sister. Did you ever play together? Did you ever jam? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We did. Yeah, yeah. But he would always go so fast for me, so... (LAUGHS) - Ooh. - At Coffee Culture. - The family immigrated from Abu Dhabi to Christchurch in 1997. - Ninja turtles, ninja turtles. (AYA LAUGHS) - What did you know about New Zealand? Um, all what I know ` it's a beautiful country... uh, in the remote area in the middle of the, uh, ocean. It became part of me, and it became like my home. - Mum Janna Ezat says her son had big plans. - But he wanted to study tourism, because he loved New Zealand. - On a Friday in 2019, Hussein went to pray at Al Noor Mosque, as he often did. And so did Abdelilah. - I always go to the mosque every Friday. Very important and holy for us. - At about 1.40pm... - It's dangerous, so keep going. (SIREN WAILS) - We heard the shots, and I looked behind, and I looked at, uh, the killer. I was looking at him when he was shooting people. He wanted to stay until he kill everyone. So as soon as I moved, he come back, and he start shooting me. Like, I can feel the shots going around me. - Abdelilah was able to climb out of a broken window without being hit. Do you remember seeing Hussein that day in the mosque? - I saw him when I was, uh, trying to leave. I saw him lying on the floor. - I received the raw video. It is, uh, forbidden now. And... mother ` I can recognise the, um... voice of my son. 'Get out!' So, 'Oh, this is Hussein's.' - In his last moments, he was going towards the direction of the terrorist to, um... which ultimately saved a lot of lives. - So this made me feel very strong and happy, proud of him that he died as a hero. And for sure, he is a shahid. - These bamboo ones here are interesting. - Yeah, this is the actual pen of calligraphy. - 'Calligraphy is a highly regarded form of Islamic art, 'and, Iraq-born, Janna Ezat's work is world-renowned.' When did you start? - I mean, I started since I was 4. - Decades of perfecting her craft, like so many artists do. So how long has it been? - Almost 27 years. - Wow. That is such an achievement. - Well... - Such an achievement. - ...my one and only job. (BOTH LAUGH) (PLAYS SLOW MELODY) - Bridget Douglas is New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's principal flautist. Does it still bring you joy to play the flute? - Absolutely. Um, music is a joy. - Mm. - Music can say things that words can't. And, uh... music connects people. - 12 months ago, she was told about a unique project to mark the fifth anniversary of the mosque attacks. - There's a lot I don't know about Islam, about the Muslim community. I'm nervous about doing the wrong thing. This project feels a little uncomfortable. It's unusual. Are we doing this for ourselves, to make ourselves feel better? Or are we doing this because we genuinely want to be part of a positive change in our society? - I think anxiety and apprehension has been a thread... throughout the project. - Kirsten Mason, artistic director at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. - I think the biggest thing that is at stake is that we offend the people who matter the most in this project, and I would just hope that they would appreciate the intentions. - Her intention was to somehow commemorate March 15, so she teamed up with globally acclaimed composer John Psathas. - There was no sensible way of embarking on this that didn't start with engagement with the community itself. We talk about the Muslim community of New Zealand, but, in fact, there are 40 or 50 ethnicities represented, 80, 85 languages. - The whole orchestra visited the Kilbirnie Mosque in the lead-up to the project. So for the whole orchestra, this is quite different. - There was a huge outpouring of empathy and grief immediately after the Christchurch mosque attacks. But have we really changed for the better? - The chief motivation in the creation of this work was to... I guess, to trigger a... a reminder of what we were immediately after these events. We were presenting an image of our best selves, I thought. - John co-wrote a full symphonic piece, and the show 'Beyond Words' was born. - Beyond Words is a... celebration of unity and a promotion of peace through music. In a rare move by the symphony orchestra, they have invited Abdelilah and these musicians to perform onstage with them. - They gave us this opportunity to show and spread our music in New Zealand. - Right. When you're ready. (ETHEREAL TONE PLAYS) - (VOCALISES) (INTONES IN ARABIC) - This is the first time they've heard the orchestral arrangement for their piece. - Sound OK? - They'll get to practise once with the actual orchestra about an hour before the biggest performance of their lives. (MUSICAL FLOURISH, MUSIC ENDS) - I've shortlisted what I think would work well with the theme that we're going for. - Janna hardly ever makes art any more. - After Hussein's death, I stopped. I need to have a big rest. This and this one. - Yeah, I know that's your favourite one. - My Mona Lisa. Yep. - That's your Mona Lisa. (CHUCKLES) - But today in Auckland... - Oh, I'm excited to see how it's all gonna pull together, yeah? - Me too. - ...she's agreed to display her artwork to the New Zealand public for the very first time. - So, it's my pleasure to do it for Hussein. For the sake of him, I will do it, and I will be happy to do it. - It's just an hour before the premiere of the show in Christchurch. This is Abdelilah's first and only practice with the orchestra. - (VOCALISES) - The two monitors are round the wrong way, so he is just getting bass. - There are technical challenges, but with hundreds now arriving... - Honestly, very nervous. - ...it's showtime. (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) (ORCHESTRA PLAYS ETHEREAL MUSIC) - (SINGS IN ARABIC) (ORCHESTRA PLAYS LIVELY MUSIC) (CONTINUES SINGING) - It's east and west, survivors and supporters, unified in musical harmony. (MUSIC ENDS) (CHEERING, APPLAUSE) - The way they showed love for us ` it's very much, much appreciated. It's healing for us. We will try to do our best to give a message and spread that love. Shallah. - And if you'd like to see this collaborative orchestral work, the NZSO will be streaming a concert performance of Beyond Words on their website this Friday at 8.30pm. For more details, head to our Facebook page. E haere ake nei ` why does MH370 remain a mystery? - We'd drawn this box, this search box, and really, at one point, I think we just became incapable of thinking outside of it. - They've insulted my family and all the other families on board, thinking that they're nothing. - Nau mai ano. It's the most enduring mystery of our time ` where is MH370? For the families of the 229 people on board, it's the 'enduring' part that's particularly painful. There's a strong belief that authorities haven't tried hard enough to find the missing plane. Tonight, 10 years on from that tragedy, Dimity Clancey examines the new clues that are keeping hope alive. - DIMITY CLANCEY: The ocean is like an old friend to Kit Olver. Kit, how long have you spent out here? - Probably the best part of 40 years. For all the time the 78-year-old fisherman has spent at sea, there's one catch he'll never forget. What did it look like? - Like a wing. It was the wing off a bloody aircraft. - Not just any aircraft. Kit believes he pulled up the wing of flight MH370. The disappearance of the Boeing 777 10 years ago is the world's greatest aviation mystery. The plane was carrying 239 people when it left Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing. But it never arrived, vanishing somewhere in the Indian Ocean. When did you first think MH370? - Oh, pretty much as soon as we saw it, we thought it. Of course we did. - Kit regrets not being able to salvage what could be a crucial piece of evidence. He says the wing got stuck in the net of his deep-sea fishing trawler, so he had to cut it free. That was in October 2014, just seven months after flight MH370 was lost. - Plenty of people just simply don't believe me, but that's up to them. Amongst those criticisms is that I didn't pull my phone out and take a photo. I didn't knock off for a bloody picnic halfway through either. I was busy. - Do you think Kit Olver's story is plausible? - Yeah, it is absolutely plausible. - Peter Waring was the deputy operations manager on the first search for MH370, which ended in 2017. It was run by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, or ATSB, and failed to find any trace of the aircraft. The underwater surveyor believes authorities should now take Kit's report seriously. - It would be relatively cheap to send a little sonar out there and scan the seafloor. And a wing, if it was in one piece and lying on the bottom of the seafloor, it would stick out. You'd be able to pick it up very quickly. - Finding the wreckage would mean even more to Jacqui Gonzales. Her husband, Patrick Gomes, was the chief steward on Flight MH370. - I thought we would have answers earlier ` way, way earlier. 10 years? I don't know if I can wait another 10 years. - It just doesn't seem fair, does it? - No. (SOMBRE MUSIC) - This is Patrick making his way through airport security at Kuala Lumpur for the last time. - This is the safety manual that he has to go through. Usually, he would just flip through before he goes on a flight, as a refresher. - You can have all the safety manuals in the world, but you could never be prepared for that. - No, it's not even in the safety book. You know, what if the plane goes missing? - The failed searches for MH370 have all been based on the same assumption ` that no one was in control of the plane when it crashed into the ocean. But a decade on, many experts believe authorities got it wrong. - If there's someone at the controls all the way to the end, then the search area is very, very different than the one we actually looked at. And that scenario I don't believe has ever adequately been considered ` certainly wasn't by the Australian government. We had drawn this box, this search box, and really, at one point, I think we just became incapable of thinking outside of it. - But the ATSB still stands by its search. - We are an evidence-based organisation. And at the moment, we don't have new evidence to suggest that what we assessed at the time was incorrect. - Angus Mitchell became the chief commissioner of the ATSB in 2021, four years after the organisation stopped searching for MH370. There's only two reasons that your search failed ` either you missed the aircraft, or you were looking in the wrong spot. Which one do you think is more likely? - Well, I think it's probably a combination. Some of the resolution of that search area was with a high degree of accuracy, and we didn't find it there. So that would suggest that some of where we're looking wasn't the right spot. Now, where the right spot is ` if we knew that, we would have searched there. - (PLAYS SOMBRE MELODY) - It's little comfort for Jacqui and her family, who will never accept authorities could just give up looking for Patrick. - They've insulted my family and all the other families on board, thinking that they're nothing. They're not nothing; they're dads, they're mums, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, you know? Children, family members. They're not just a thing that we lost. - It's really troubling, in fact, that not only have we got to this 10-year mark, but there's absolutely nothing in the way of it becoming 20 years very quickly. - Yeah, A sobering thought. E whai ake nei ` is there any chance of taking another look? - Ultimately, there are some things that are beyond our capabilities, and at this stage, that's where the MH370 sits. - Once you start something, you should try and finish it. - What's stopping you from launching a search? - Hey, Toyota. - (BABY FUSSES) - WHISPERS: Got something safe? It's kind of a big deal for me now. - Yeah, take your pick! WHISPERS: 'Oh, sorry. 'These all come with Toyota Safety Sense as standard.' - Will it be looking for signs of danger? - Well, yeah. It has a pre-collision system with autonomous emergency braking. - Can it help me stay in my lane? - Actually, it can. (CAR ALARM BEEPS) - (MAN SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) - Can it help me keep a safe distance from others? - Yep, that too. - Do you do 5am test drives? (SIREN BLARES) - When 239 people vanish, you'd think authorities would never give up the search to find them. But Fuad Sharuji fears that's exactly what's happened in the case of MH370. - There's no answer, no closure. - He was in charge of managing the crisis at Malaysia Airlines. - There were certain things that we could have done differently, yes. We could have improved on the intercommunication with the various government agencies, rather than being disjointed. The police is doing something; the military is doing something else. It wasn't very effective. - Like so many affected by this disaster, Fuad is desperate to know what went wrong and why. But there's one possibility he will never accept ` that it was a deliberate act of mass murder by his friend and colleague of 30 years, the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. - He does not have the capacity or the character of an assassin. - But many have speculated that because he had plotted an almost identical flight path on his home simulator, it proves he had evil intentions. What other reason could Captain Zaharie have been plotting that flight for? - I do not know. I mean, it's very common for pilots to practise ditching ` ditching, landing on the sea. And to take away his own life, uh, it is not... - You can't fathom it. - I can't fathom it at all. - It was psychologically very challenging to consider that someone may have cut off oxygen to all of the passengers and then flown the aircraft for hours and hours afterwards. I think that the psychological profile of someone that would do that is so far off the scale that it was very difficult for people to think about. - The only way to prove that theory is to find the wreckage. Peter Waring tried in 2015. He worked on the first search for MH370. But the undersea surveyor believes the mission was doomed to fail as soon as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, or ATSB, was put in charge. - The Australian Government made a fundamental mistake in assuming that a transportation investigation authority could run a search ` and not just any search, but the largest search in human history. - Do you think the ATSB was the best person for the job? - This certainly wasn't an ATSB solo effort. This was very much a multinational effort to search for the plane that, tragically, was unsuccessful at the time. - 10 years on, the ATSB's Angus Mitchell admits they're no closer to finding the plane. - Ultimately, there are some things that are beyond our capabilities. And at this stage, that's where the MH370 sits. - That's awful. And that's awful for the families of those loved ones. - Absolutely. And that's something that sits very heavily with our staff as well. - No matter who you speak to about MH370, everyone wants the same thing ` for someone to step up and resume the search for the missing plane. You'd think the 10-year anniversary would be a good time for the Malaysian Government to do it. But there is little hope. No one, from the Prime Minister down, would speak to us, not even just to acknowledge the endless pain of the families left behind. - I'm angry because they're not acknowledging what they're supposed to do. They promised ` 'We'll find the plane,' you know? 'We'll do everything that we can. We won't give up.' - A decade after losing her husband, Patrick, in the tragedy, Jacqui Gonzales has to accept their granddaughter will never get to meet him. The only thing she can hope for is to one day lay him to rest. If you could say something to Patrick, what would you say to him? - What else can I tell him to do, you know, but to rest in peace? - Well, a small glimmer of hope this week ` Ocean Infinity, the private company that searched for MH370 in 2018, has offered to try again. The Malaysian government say they're open to the idea if there is new and credible information. And finally this evening ` Kiwi businesses combining sustainability and profitability, proudly presented with Kiwibank. Over at TVNZ+, discover the world-leading technology that is Cranepower ` an electric alternative to diesel generators that will reduce global emissions in construction. Well, that is our show this evening. Now, as you may know, it's been a tough time at TVNZ this week with proposals which affect this show and others, but we want to thank you for supporting us every week for more than 20 years. Now, if you want to get in touch, you can reach us on social media or email, and you can watch our show on TVNZ+. Nga mihi nui. Hei kona.