HM Coastguard treating kayaker's emergency VHF radio transmission as false alarm


HM Coastguard is currently treating an emergency VHF Radio transmission made by a kayaker in distress on Saturday afternoon in the Banff area as a false alarm at this stage.

 The voice recording has been subject to multiple playbacks and the absence of background noise has cast doubts that this transmission was made at sea in rough conditions.  After an extensive and thorough search was carried out by the Coastguard, we can further report that no vehicle or other evidence of kayaking activities were found, nor has there been any reports of missing persons in that area.

HM Coastguard Duty Controller Matt West said:  ‘If we get an emergency transmission we always treat it as real.   If we think someone’s in danger or in trouble we will always search for them rather than risk loss of life.   

‘If this does turn out to be a hoax, we would take this opportunity to remind people that making deliberate, false or misleading calls is against the law and we treat it very seriously. We keep a record of these calls and hold those records as evidence for future prosecutions. Have no doubt, if you make a hoax call and we catch you, you will be prosecuted under the full force of the law. Not only is it wasting the valuable time of our Coastguard officers, volunteers and resources such as the RNLI and our aircraft while searching; it also may be putting other lives at risk by diverting our resources away from genuine emergencies.  It also puts our emergency services’ crews lives at risk – on Saturday the weather conditions were extremely rough with the seas 4-5 metres high.  Our crews searched into Saturday evening and again the following morning with nothing found.  There are no plans to resume this search unless further information comes forward.’

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