On guard

Manned 24/7,the Indian Coast Guard’s MRCC in Mumbai — part of the “international maritime obligation” — is the hub of India’s anti-piracy operations. While there are three MRCC connectivity hubs in the country,it’s the Mumbai MRCC that covers the most sensitive three million sq km on the western seaboard of India’s six million-sq km Search and Rescue Region (SRR).

Working in tandem with the Operations Centre,the off-shore security apparatus ensures connectivity with merchant vessels plying as far as 1,000 nautical miles off the Indian coast to smaller vessels around the region between south of Karachi and the Seychelles. Every intelligence is acted upon and swift decisions taken based on innumerable distress alerts.

While the Long Range Identification and Tracking System (LRIT) is an information feed on every merchant vessel within 1,000 nautical kilometres,the Automatic Identification serves the same purpose for vessels in a smaller nautical distance between 30 and 40 nautical miles. Another system of Vessel Traffic Management System (VTMS) gives active pointers for offshore supply vessels (OSV) and Off-Shore Development Area,considered to be very sensitive and crucial nautical landmarks supporting effective air and seaborne management. But,the mother connectivity system remains the twin-operated Global Maritime Distress Safety Systems that can operate if a heavy traffic situation is to ever arise.

Perched on top of the mother systems are the statistical records confirming the efficiency of the MRCC. “In 2010,the Coast Guard could save 426 lives based on urgent alerts tracked by MRCC. In 2011,of the 23 alerts received,86 lives were saved,” an officer said.

The fact that no alert is ignored can be gauged from that a Chinese maritime information this week about a Somalian pirate attack 152 nautical miles from the Prongs Lighthouse off Colaba coast was taken seriously; it eventually turned out to be a strayed fishing boat,a fact that had been anticipated even before the call for aircraft was sent. “We take every call seriously. The idea of MRCC is to ensure alertness over any suspicious movement,” the officer adds.

Senior Coast Guard officers said the Indian Ship Reporting System or INDSAR,the international satellite-based search and rescue distress alert — Cospas Sarsat — that works based on distress signals sent through radio beacons and the MRCC’s other distress alerts were made available for an audit by the International Maritime Organisation. “The world body had called for volunteered audits. The discipline and sophistication showed. They gave us a good rating.”