Search and rescue operation involving marine beacon still a mystery

An emergency marine callthat sent two Hercules aircraft from CFB Greenwood to the mid-Atlantic on Friday continues to be a mystery.

OnFriday afternoon, theJoint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax responded after an emergency beacon carried by vessels was activated1,670 kilometres east of St. John's, N.L., and 780 kilometres from the coast of the Azores.

Search crews didn't find any signs of a ship in distress and officials called off the search Saturday afternoon after about 24 hours.

On Sunday, the centre's Maj. Martell Thompson said they located the beacon but didn't recover it.

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"Until that is completed, we won't be able to definitively say which vessel corresponds to that beacon. We've searched an extensive area and we see no signs of distress."

Though the signal came from quite a distance, it was stillwithin the Halifax searchand rescue region, said Maj.RhondaStevens of the Joint Rescue and Co-ordination Centre.

'We were holding our breath'

"We didn't find anything, no debris and we turned it over to the security team so they can investigate, figure out howthis beacon ended up in the middle of the Atlantic.

"The weather in the area wasn't great, there were some prettyhigh seas. It turned out it was just the beacon."

Emergency beacons can be installed in a variety of places aboard vessels, from life rafts to wheelhouses.

How the one that activated Friday's extensive search operationended up overboard remains unclear.

"We don't have the answers for that right now. So that's for thebeacon registry folks along with the security folks andintelligence folks as tohow the beacon ended up in the mid-Atlantic,and becoming activated," Stevens said.

The Halifax Search and Rescue Region covers all four Atlantic provinces, eastern half of Quebec, southern half of Baffin Island and the northwestern quadrant of theAtlantic Ocean about 4.7 million square kilometres.

Stevens said the section of ocean crews scanned borders with Portugal's search area. Waves in that area can be between seven and eight metres this time of year.

Search crews were relieved there was no emergency, she said.

"We were holding our breath until the aircraft got onscene to see what we were actually going to find, especially thatdistance out. Some of the challenging sea states that are outthere this time of year...so it was quite challenging."

Ships in area joined search

The search operation that pulled in vessels sailing in the area as well as two Portugese aircraftcontinued Friday night and into Saturday. Two Hercules aircraft from Greenwod were joined by aCasa 295and a P3 Orionaircraft from Portugal.

"[The ships] responded to the broadcast andconducted a search as well for us," Stevens said.

"We ran a number of models we have at the joint rescue co-ordination centre that detects drift of objects in the water basedon the temperatures, winds and we conducted daylight search aswell today and we didn't find anything," Stevens said.

National Defence is responsible for dispatching aircraft and co-ordinating aerial searches at the federal level. There arethree search and rescue centres that work with provincial andmunicipal governments and volunteersthat handle more than 15,000 calls each year, including hundreds of false alerts.

In 2013, theauditor general published a review of Canada's searchandrescue operations.

"We found that the Canadian Forces now analyzes the causes of false alerts," the report observed.

"The Canadian Forces informed us that the number of air and marine false alerts from 2009 to 2012 was about 2,800 out of a total of 3,000 alerts, taking time and resources to resolve."