A Tauranga cruise boat skipper has branded the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's response to Monday's oil spill as 'too little” and 'too slow”.

Brandon Stone runs Kewpie Harbour Cruises, offering scenic tours from Pilot Bay in Mount Maunganui as well as functions and trips to Matakana Island.

Kewpie skipper Brandon Stone with a ruined fender. Photos: Andrew Campbell.

But the 52ft, two-level boat has been stationary for the past two days, with bookings being cancelled thanks to the Mobil spill.

And after the ignominy of turning away business, the Tauranga Bridge Marina customer is calling for improvements in the port spill response system.

'We are at the end of our season and we have had to turn away bookings,” says Brandon. 'We don't want to be dragging the oil around, and we don't know what wild life we are going to see with oil on it.

'That's the main thing. How do we do scenic tours when there's a chance we will see shags or penguins that have been affected?

''That's not the experience our customers want to see, and it's not how we want to portray Tauranga. Now there's oil all around the harbour. We didn't wasn't to be doing scenic harbour tours in something that's not scenic.

'The oil is still there, washing in and out of the Harbour Bridge Marina at every tide.”

Booms are currently in situ under the ramps and across the current to stop the tide taking more of the oil deeper into the marina.

On Friday, around half-a-dozen workers were seen blotting up the oil sheen on the water with absorbent pads.

But Brandon says the response from the regional council has too little and too slow.

'Mobil themselves were down there – they're a bunch of good guys,” he adds.

'They were there with high-viz jackets and clip boards, and they're are as blown away as anyone else.

'There was talk about getting a hundred people from trade staff or from the backpackers to come down and help respond. That was Thursday - the oil spill was on Monday.

'There should be hundreds of people down there cleaning it up, not five or six people from Mobil's office.

'You can stand in the marina right now and just watch oil go in this way on the tide and back out that way on the tide.

'And they have got one guy with a clip board, they've got a pad or two in the water and someone's prodding it with a stick while another three guys watching them do it.”

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council's view of events, however, is quite different.

In a statement released on Friday afternoon, Harbourmaster Peter Buell boasts: 'It's like having a fully stocked toolbox at our fingertips,” when describing the options available to their oil spill response team.

Though council has a statutory responsibility to respond to a tier two marine oil spill with a trained team 24 hours a day, they insist it's not just people that are key to responding – it's the equipment they have available to use.

Peter says each spill needs to be looked at individually depending on where it is, what type of oil is involved and what the weather is doing at the time.

'For example, when the spill occurred on Monday there were high winds,” he explains, 'which meant some booms were better for us to use than others.

'For this spill, sorbent booms have been the booms of choice. Once full of oil the booms are removed from the water and replaced.

'There has been a lot of back-breaking manual work going on – it's hard work but in some instances it's the best thing for the environment we're working in. At the top of our mind is that we don't want to make things worse, so if we have to do it by hand, we will.”

'So far more than 12 tonnes of oily waste including oil covered vegetation, sand and debris have been collected from the Mangatapu and Motuopuhi Island and the Bridge Marina.