HM Coastguard has launched an appeal for boat owners to check their emergency position radios after being called to a spate of false alarms.
The Buchan Coastguard team has been launched into action almost three times a month to an emergency position indication radio beacon (EPIRB), alerting the service that a vessel might be in danger.
And every time, during searches lasting up to two hours, the crew found no sign of any boat.
They were again called out yesterday morning: the 11th instance of the same machine being triggered since June.
HM Coastguard has now attributed the fruitless searches to an EPIRB in Peterhead.
It has asked for the owner to make contact with them to resolve the matter.
Last night, a spokeswoman for the Coastguard said the service was not looking to reprimand the machine’s owner.
And duty controller Kaimes Beasley added that it was likely the beacon was knocking against something else on the boat and triggering accidentally.
He said: “We are appealing to everyone in the Peterhead area who has an EPIRB to check their device and get in touch with us as soon as possible, so we can resolve the matter.
“There is also a possibility that the EPIRB is faulty which is why it is sending the alerts. We need to rule out all possibilities, because at the moment we are responding to all the alerts we are receiving, which means sending assets on scene to search the area.”
Local coastal officer Calum Christie confirmed the crew, alongside the port’s lifeboat team, was treating every alert as a real emergency.
He added: “When this EPIRB goes off, it is treated as a distress signal, as if someone is in immediate danger and in need of assistance.
“We’ll search until we reach a suitable conclusion.”
The search for the EPIRB’s owner comes as efforts to cut down on the number of false call-outs intensify.
Earlier this month, crews from Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Cruden Bay had to be launched after flares were maliciously set off near Peterhead Harbour.
