As the 2024 fishing season gears up, the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) wants everyone on the water to know that no call is too small.
According to Mark Gould, Deputy Superintendent of search and rescue (SAR) with the CCG, the situations that the SAR team handle varies both in scope and complexity.
“It could be a day or two or three-day long search for a missing individual, which is very complex. It requires a lot of different resources and working with a lot of different people, or it could be someone who’s just missing — they’re overdue. They didn’t leave a good sail plan, so we don’t have a lot of information to go on, and in that case our role is more investigative,” said Gould. “It could take us hours to a day to learn enough to find where this person is. They might be safe, but we still have to go through that process.”
At any CCG rescue centre, there are always two people on staff ready to take emergency distress calls. If any mariner calls in to the centre, Gould said while one is taking the initial call and discerning important data related to their location, condition and the nature if their distress, the other is immediately coordinating a search and rescue effort.
“The first step would be a distress broadcast. All the vessels out there are supposed to maintain a radio watch, so you send a general broadcast to all those vessels saying, ‘Someone is in trouble. Is there anyone close that can help?’ Oftentimes, when there’s fishermen out there, there will be more than one,” said Gould.
“The second step, which would be a minute later, is to task one of our own resources.”
Throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, where Gould is based, CGG resources are spread throughout the province to enable fast response times to emergencies — from Burin and Burgeo on the south coast, to Lark Harbour and Port au Choix in the west, to St. Anthony in the north and Twillingate and Old Perlican in the east.
“Ideally, we’ll have a marine resource if it’s urgent, like a fire or someone is about to abandon. We also have our partners in DND (Department of National Defense) with the cormorant in Gander that we can send, as well. They’re fast and they’re amazing at what they do, so that helps us in those severe situations, as well,” said Gould.
While the CCG is home to staff with a wealth of experience and skill, Gould said that if you’re in trouble, there are several things you can do to make their jobs easier. Wearing a personal flotation device (PFD), carrying a personal locator beacon (PLB), having a registered emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) onboard your vessel and making sure your flotation device is bright orange for easy identification are small ways to prepare in the case of an emergency situation.
Having a sail plan in place for someone you know on land, according to Gould, is one of the best ways to safeguard yourself in the face of the unexpected.
“If you don’t get home at a certain time, they can call us for help,” said Gould. When they call us, they can tell us how many people we’re looking for, what they’re wearing, where they normally fish, what time they were supposed to be back and whether they have safety equipment. All that helps us to really narrow down that search area and gives us a much, much better chance of finding them.”
Gould also stressed to anyone on the water that no situation is too unimportant to get the Coast Guard involved.
“If you’re worried, call us. It’s pretty easy for us to do radio calls and check on people,” said Gould. “If we had to send an asset out to check, I’d take a million of those where we go out and find someone that’s just been delayed a couple hours over a call at 10 o’clock when it’s getting dark, and someone is missing that we’re going to struggle to find.”
