The Kaikōura lights

Lights filmed off Kaikōura, New Zealand, at the end of December 1978 from a newspaper plane carrying a television crew, after earlier sightings from an aircraft that radar also tracked. Officials suggested fishing-boat lights and planets but gave no firm answer.

The Press in Christchurch reported on 2 January 1979 that an Australian television crew had filmed one object in the early hours of Sunday from a Safe Air Argosy. Melbourne's Channel 0 called its film the best-documented UFO sighting, and it had already been shown in Britain and Australia. The Press added that there had been more reports that weekend around the Clarence River, near Kaikōura, following sightings from an aircraft, also recorded on radar, ten days before, and that a jet fighter had been put on standby. Recalling the flight in 2018, the New Zealand Herald said the television group had been invited aboard Merchant Enterprise, the Blenheim-based Argosy, late on 30 December, when pilots Bob Guard and Bill Startup were flying newspapers from Wellington to Christchurch.

Official answers varied. On 4 January 1979 The Press reported the Ministry of Defence's view that its own aircrew had found the lights of a Japanese fishing fleet, together with Venus rising, to be possible explanations. The film was to be analysed by computer at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). RNZ, reporting on released government files in 2021, quotes the DSIR as declining to commit, but guessing the filmed objects were general light on the horizon, possibly from Jupiter or Venus. RNZ's headline says officials could not explain the lights.

ABC News in Australia reported in 2010 that the New Zealand military had released its UFO files, and that one of the fullest concerned two sightings of lights off Kaikōura in 1978, one filmed by the television crew.