Coast Guard "ears" hear distress calls

They're everywhere: the Coast Guard's eyes and ears.

For years, the U.S. Coast Guard has employed a sweeping network of radar and video equipment to monitor just about everything that moves on Puget Sound. And now they have big ears to match their eyes.

The Coast Guard recently launched Rescue 21, a high-tech system of radio receivers designed to instantly recognize and locate the source of distress calls.

The Coast Guard says it promises to greatly speed up rescues.

The system represents a "quantum leap" in search-and-rescue technology, said Capt. Stephen Metruck, Coast Guard commander for Sector Seattle, who inaugurated the Rescue 21 technology earlier this year.

The Coast Guard took part in nearly 400 search-and-rescue cases in Northwest waters last year, he said, saving 58 lives and assisting 650 other people.

The new system is based in the same Operations Center at Pier 36 where the Coast Guard tracks the movements of any vessel that shows up on its radar, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ferries, subs and more

Despite the watching and listening, the Coast Guard, which is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, insists its mission is strictly maritime safety and rescue.

The Coast Guard has been monitoring vessel traffic on Puget Sound for 35 years.

Before that, ships and boats cruised the Sound and other U.S. harbors at will, subject only to traditional rules of the road.

That changed in 1971, when two oil tankers collided under the Golden Gate Bridge. In response, Congress passed the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, and in 1972 the Coast Guard cobbled together a system of radar, cameras and other devices now known as the Puget Sound Vessel Traffic System (VTS).

Since then, the regional VTS has become one of the world's most advanced marine-traffic systems, tracking some 220,000 large-vessel transits per year, or an average 600 per day, across some 3,500 square miles of inland waters.

Perhaps the single biggest challenge involves state ferries, whose east-west routes cross the courses of virtually everything else on the Sound — from fishing boats and tugs to container ships and Trident submarines.

In most cases, ferries yield to north-south traffic, the Coast Guard says. But the VTS monitors each crossing to prevent collisions.

Five people staff the VTS center at Pier 36 around the clock, watching radar and video screens and communicating with larger vessels when necessary.

Their electronic view extends into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Canadian authorities based at Tofino, B.C., track vessels approaching the entrance to the strait, and the U.S. and Canada collaborate on vessel-traffic services in the strait.

Every minute counts

Larger vessels are required to check in with VTS when they enter local waters. But the radar also detects and tracks many smaller vessels, the Coast Guard says.

However, when small boats get into trouble, such as a grounding or loss of power, the Coast Guard sometimes has trouble finding them. Even in a mayday call, the Coast Guard relied on boaters to report their location.

But boaters often are unable to report a precise position, Metruck said. Or the transmission can be garbled.

Now, the Coast Guard knows. Ten radio towers scan Puget Sound and adjacent waters, and each has direction-finding equipment that can locate the source of a radio transmission as weak as 1 watt and as brief as two seconds. The signal is picked up by two or more towers, and a computer zeroes in on the source.

This will decrease rescue response time dramatically, Metruck says. "And given the cold-water conditions in the Pacific Northwest, we need to find people as quickly as possible."

The system has another advantage: Each year, the Coast Guard responds to some 40 hoax distress calls, wasting time and risking lives in the process, Metruck said. By instantly locating the source, the Rescue 21 system allows the Guard to identify hoaxes — including those that originate from land.

Ross Anderson is a former Seattle Times reporter.