UFO sightings in New Zealand by region

Where in New Zealand has the most UFO sightings? We wanted to know so we analysed the UFO sightings released by the New Zealand Defence Force in 2010 and found out. The files are now available through the National Library.

Hover your mouse over the map below to see the percentage of sightings in each region.

UFO sightings in New Zealand by region Placeholder
UFO sightings in New Zealand by region

Methodology

  1. The NZ Defence Force UFO Files released in 2010 contain reported sightings from three sources: press reports, the Citizen Saucer Investigation organisation (CSI), and various government agencies. The main government agencies that received reports were the NZ Defence Force/RNZAF, the Ministry of Defence, Civil Aviation, and the police.
  2. We have recorded the places where these sightings took place with certain exceptions, see #3.
  3. In order to minimise any margin of error, we left out the following reports:
    1. any description that either can’t be distinguished from that of a meteor or has been identified as a meteor in the report. This would be less than 20.
    2. in order to avoid duplication we omitted the small number of sightings that did not record the actual day, but just month or year.
    3. those from which the exact date of the sighting (e.g.” last Saturday”) can’t be worked out from calendars of past years.
  4. If there is no clear source for the UFO sighting, the source is recorded as Defence Files e.g. it may be a letter, but it’s not clear which government agency received it.
  5. On the UFO Map, Nelson and Tasman districts’ UFO sightings have been conflated, as it was difficult to distinguish whether most of the sightings were in the Nelson or the Tasman area.

Comments:

We suggest that reported UFO sightings are the tip of the iceberg, as we think it would only be a minority of people who would make the effort to look up the contact number of the relevant agency and phone them, or write a letter about their sighting.

We think it is fairly clear that the explanations given for the majority of reported sightings by government agencies ignore the actual description given by the witnesses. Find out more about the significance of UFOs.