False rescue alarms triggered due to Kerala fishermen’s inept handling of specialised rescue devices issued to them has the Coast Guard, the agency responsible for search and rescue in India’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), fret about such alarms causing its resources and time to go waste.
Some 150 distress alert transponders (DATs) made by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Space Application Centre at Ahmedabad and nearly 7,500 radio beacons (emergency position indicating radio beacons a.k.a search and rescue beacons) developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thiruvananthapuram and manufactured by Keltron at its Karakulam complex, were distributed to fishermen on the Kerala coast over the last few years as a means to safeguard their lives during emergencies at sea.
However, shoddy handling of the equipment results in false rescue alarms, forcing the Coast Guard to launch aerial and vessel searches for naught. “At least thrice a week, we receive such false alarms,” an official said on condition of anonymity.
One such instance was on July 2 when a 24-hour radio alarm was raised from a fishing vessel some 18 nautical miles off Vizhinjam, near Thiruvananthapuram. The Coast Guard launched a Dornier recce aircraft and diverted its ship Samar to the area which at that time had 25 country boats and two trawlers (registered in Tamil Nadu, as trawling ban is in force in Kerala) in operation. “When we finally located the vessel, a 30-ft vallam (country boat), it was safely docked at the harbour, its radio beacon still transmitting the distress signal,” said the official.
“There have been instances of fishermen taking it home, causing it to be in alert mode when their children fiddled with it,” said an official of the Fisheries Department, the agency which issued the Keltron-made radio beacons free of cost.
Fisheries officials said radio beacons, operating in international frequencies, sent out distress alarms the moment they came to contact with salt water. “The distress signals, picked up by any of the 27 satellites over the Indian Ocean region, are sent to the maritime rescue coordination centre (MRCC) in Mumbai which automatically initiates search and rescue operations by the Coast Guard,” said another official.
“While we periodically hold awareness programmes to educate fishermen on handling the device properly, false alarms are caused even now,” said a fisheries official. “They are not particularly careful about the upkeep of the device,” he says. A Keltron official involved in making the device said the imported batteries of the radio beacons would function without glitches at least for five years if properly used. Once activated, the alarm would transmit signal for 60 hours, he said.
The Coast Guard, on its part, also conducts periodic awareness camps through the Kadalora Jagrata Samitis in which fishermen are taught how to use the rescue equipment. For want of a solution to resolve the issue of false alarms, the agencies are now thinking of intensifying sensitisation camps.
