North-east rescue teams have pleaded for an end to the hoax calls which have risked disaster by potentially preventing them from reaching real emergencies.
Since the start of June, RNLI and Coastguard teams from Buckie, Macduff and Fraserburgh have been called out 10 times in response to false reports of vessels in distress.
Earlier this week, a police investigation was launched to find out of the increasing number of false alarm calls have been made maliciously.
And Colin Wood, the senior Coastguard operations manager for Moray, yesterday outlined the impact on Coastguard and lifeboat crews as he appealed for help to end the problem.
Mr Wood said: “We spend a lot of time investigating these incidents and, when crews are out looking, it wastes their time and could prevent them from attending another local call in good time.
“If they are far away from the station, they will struggle to get out to a real-life emergency.
“This has a detrimental effect on the local volunteers as well, as they have to ask for time-off from their employer – which they then have to work back.
“And if it is a hoax, the employer might hesitate to release them during a real emergency.
“There’s been a rise this year and I honestly have no clue why that is, but I would stress to anyone with any information about the hoax calls to contact the police.”
The false alarms have been reported via phone calls, radio messages and social media messages.
Buckie’s RNLI team was launched on Monday to a hoax call about a vessel being in distress.
A spokesman for Buckie Lifeboat station said: “It is having a big impact on the crew with our morale going down and also our working life as we are missing wages after being called out.
“There has been an increase in hoax messages in the last while in this area and we want them to stop and hopefully with the coastguard working with the police they will.
“We worry that if we are in Lossiemouth responding to one, it will take us double the time to get to Portsoy if an incident occurs.”
Detective Inspector Martin Macdougall previously pledged to determine whether there was “irresponsible criminal behaviour” at play.
He said: “These calls are being thoroughly investigated to establish their exact nature.
“If all these calls are indeed found to be malicious, then this reckless and irresponsible criminal behaviour has wasted the valuable time of the coastguard and the RNLI – and potentially put lives at risk.”
