Busy year for Australia's marine rescue authority

Overall, AMSA said its rescue centre had responded to 10,292 “operational incidents” that included 850 hours of flight time for its Challenger jet as part of 192 search and rescue operations that dropped 41 support packages that included VHF radios and satellite phones used to communicate with rescuers. It even dropped a couple of pumps that were used to refloat sinking vessels.

The group is also responsible for the lighthouses and beacons scattered around the Australian coastline. AMSA said it had used 2500 litres of paint while maintaining lighthouses, and changed 50 lights on beacons as part of its day-to-day operations.

It also registered more than 50,000 distress beacons for the year including almost 20,000 personal locator beacons, bringing the total number of registered beacons throughout Australia to 627,480.

But the authority also has a policing role. In the last 12 months AMSA launched more than 1900 inspections that resulted in 94 commercial vessels being detained, and two ships being banned from entering Australian ports.

In 2019, AMSA also had to deal with older GPS systems reaching a critical date that would have reported the devices in the wrong position, announced it would phase out the monitoring of all HF radio frequencies bar the emergency channels, warned boaties that LED lighting could interfere with VHF radios, advised people to chuck out old kapok lifejackets, and warned of the dangers of fuel vapours after a run of incidents.