Got a phone call from Water Police as we were having a final debriefing from a training weekend exercise with the Denham and Carnarvon sea rescue groups about a 121.5 epirb going off in the Carnarvon region. Told them that we had both boats down there along with our epirb radio direction finder wand [did training with it the day before] and it would be 3 hours before we arrived back there. They said it had shown up on one pass of the satellite and the next pass wasn't for another hour so could we monitor it as we travelled. Phoned them for an update when half way back and was told they were sending the Dornier search plane up to try to locate the source of the signal.

We were about 5nm out when the plane passed over and watched it do a circle over the town a couple of times then land at the airport. Got the next phone call a few minutes later that the signal was coming from the rubbish tip and could we use the wand to locate it. Unload all the gear off the boats and I grabbed the wand and off to the dump to go searching, luckily it had been a quiet day and I was able to find it and turn it off inside of ten minutes. The person who dumped it had also chucked out a flare and other bits and pieces with it.

Not sure if its an offence to dump them but would appreciate it if when getting rid of old epirbs could you drop them off at your local sea rescue group or closest DoT as this is about the 3-4 time we have done this over the years.