The Kaikoura UFOs

The Kaikoura UFOs (Hodder and Stoughton, 1980) is the account of Captain Bill Startup, the Safe Air pilot who flew the Argosy freighter on the night of 30–31 December 1978, when a Melbourne television crew aboard filmed bright lights off the Kaikōura coast of New Zealand, with radar contacts reported. Written with Neil Illingworth, it gives the cockpit view of the flight and argues against the explanations offered at the time.

The Royal New Zealand Air Force attributed the sightings to Venus, atmospheric effects and the lights of squid-fishing boats; a later re-examination of the film by the DSIR scientist William Ireland matched the lights to squid boats about 6 km away. Startup and the reporter Quentin Fogarty, who wrote his own book, rejected the squid-boat explanation.

Sources: Wikipedia · NZ Skeptics · Kaikōura incident record