Accidental activations of emergency locator beacons are increasing, costing thousands of dollars in wasted resources.
Maritime NZ’s Rescue Coordination Centre search and rescue officer James Simpson told RNZ’s Midday Report the “inappropriate” disposal of locator beacons has resulted in call outs to landfills and transfer stations.
“That’s detracting from our core business of responding to genuine alerts,” he said.
Simpson said ownership of locater beacons had increased in New Zealand, meaning their disposal rate, and their wrong disposal rate had increased.
He said it was costing not only money but time.
“It depends entirely on where the beacon is located and how easy it is to determine whether it is a genuine call out or not, but the most important cost is the time it takes to deal with these.
“Thankfully, of the 35 we’ve received in 2025 so far, 33 of those were closed down fairly quickly without the need to deploy resources to landfills because the beacons were registered, and we could confirm that they had been disposed of inappropriately.
“However, two of them were not registered and that meant that we did have to deploy helicopters to make sure there was actually no one in distress.”
Disposing of a beacon
Simpson said to properly dispose of personal locator beacons they had to be deregistered, which he said could be done online or via the rescue coordination centre.
“We will make sure the beacon is deregistered, deactivated and disposed of correctly.”
He said that it was also just as important to register a beacon, which could be done through the Rescue Coordination Centre’s website.
“It’s free easy and it helps us to help you.
“Taking two minutes to register may just save someone’s life.”
rnz.co.nz
