Owner operators

Our staff are working to provide services for you under the current COVID Alert Levels. Thank you for your patience.

New Zealand is now operating under the Covid Protection Framework. Our offices are closed to visitors except by prior appointment.

Find out what this means for you read more

Seafarers with expired or expiring certificates

We have made changes that will allow seafarers to continue to work with expired certificates of competency, medicals and ancillaries, for a specific period of time.

Find out if this applies to you

If you hold one of the following certificates and it expired between 11 March 2020 and 30 June 2020:

Seafarer certificate of competency
Seafarer medical certificate
First aid ancillary certificate for national certificates

or if your STCW ancillary certificate of proficiency that requires a five-early renewal has expired, download these guidelines to find out how this will apply to you:

Seafarer certificates expiring during COVID19[PDF: 204kB, 2 pages]

Processing your applications

Although our staff are now working from home, we have made changes so we can continue to provide services for you.

Read about the changes

We recommend that you only send your applications and documents to us electronically by email:

The two forms of ID you send in must be certified by the person completing page 9 (Trusted Referee Confirmation of Identity) of the Fit and Proper Person Form. If you are directly affected by COVID-19 and cannot provide these certified items, please contact us on seafarers@maritimenz.govt.nz or 0508 732 237.
All other documents do not need to be certified or countersigned.
Please do not send original documents, only electronic copies.
If you are renewing a certificate, we do not need you to send the original expiring certificate.

When providing us with electronic copies of documents, please make sure the scanned copies are legible and of a good quality.

If you are unable to provide your application documents to us electronically, we recommend you contact us so we can make alternative arrangements for you.

Contact us

Find out how to contact us

The best way of contacting us is by email

We are monitoring our email and will respond to your enquiry as soon as possible.

Please use the following email addresses:
seafarers@maritimenz.govt.nz for all seafarer enquiries
operators@maritimenz.govt.nz for vessel related safety and certification
ship.registration@maritimenz.govt.nz for Part A and Part B registrations
exemptions.officer@maritimenz.govt.nz for all exemptions
enquiries@maritimenz.govt.nz for all other general enquiries