Maritime New Zealand wants to find the man whose hoax mayday call sparked a major search and rescue operation off Whangarei that cost $28,160 of vital emergency funds.
Coastguard, police, Northland Electricity rescue helicopter, navy ship Pukaki, a fixed-wing aeroplane and the Rescue Co-ordination Centre NZ in Wellington all sprang into action after a mayday call was made during appalling weather conditions about 1am on August 14.
The male caller said he was skipper of a boat named East Coaster, with four others, and the vessel was in trouble between the Hen and Chicken Islands.
The call turned out to be a hoax but not before rescuers' lives were put at risk during the search and costs of $28,160.84 incurred.
The Royal NZ Navy was also involved but the navy does not charge the National Rescue Co-ordination Centre for search and rescue support.
Maritime NZ (MNZ) spokesman Nigel Clifford said searchers' lives were needlessly put at risk because somebody thought it was a good idea to make the hoax call.
Mr Clifford said MNZ had an annual operating budget of around $800,000 and the hoax callout was a waste of taxpayers' money, which could have been spent on real emergencies.
He said if the culprit was caught MNZ would take action against him and hopefully recover some of the wasted search costs.
MNZ had received 23 hoax emergency callouts since 2004 but the August incident was the only one that had incurred any costs as MNZ could usually determine within minutes if a call was genuine or not.
"But this was a particularly difficult one.
"It was quite plausible and the weather was atrocious at the time, so we had to take it seriously," he said.
Mr Clifford said thankfully hoax calls were rare.
Whangarei Coastguard skipper Dave Gray said at the time that the search was conducted amid some of the worst sea conditions he had searched in during his nine years' service.
Whangarei Coastguard president John Haselden said the coastguard crew had to treat the call as genuine and it was disappointing it turned out to be a hoax as it had put the lives of the rescuers at risk.
Mr Haselden said the organisation was always needing funds and hoax callouts did not help.
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