The Pathfinder for Maritime Search & Rescue

When someone is missing at sea, the determination of where and how to search is a complex task involving many uncertainties.  One major uncertainty is where the winds and ocean currents are moving the survivors. Through the use of the Pathfinder surface current drifter, the uncertainty of the ocean currents can be eliminated. The Pathfinder is an advanced real-time self-locating datum marker buoy with enhanced functionality. A Self Locating Datum Marker Buoy (SLDMB) is a drifting marine marker buoy designed to measure surface currents and transmit the information to a Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre for search and rescue planning purposes.

SLDMBs have been used in search and rescue for well over a decade in the maritime environment, but now a second generation have been introduced, real-time SLDMBs. These time critical surface current drifters no longer use a slow satellite network that can take hours to provide the search planner with the surface currents. Second generation SLDMBs are designed for search and rescue. The results are almost immediate, and they constantly update to provide the search planners and rescue units on scene with the rapidly changing environmental information they need to save lives.

The SLDMB is designed for deployment in search and rescue (SAR) missions, and are equipped with a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) sensor that, upon deployment in fresh or saltwater, transmits its location periodically to the search mission coordinator via a global satellite communications network. 

Maritime Search Planning with SLDMBs

Every maritime search and rescue professional knows how difficult it is to locate persons lost at sea. From the sailor drifting in an immersion suit, to the swimmer who got caught in a rip-tide, minutes count. The calculation of where and how to search is a science of estimates and uncertainties.

For today's professional search mission coordinator working in a maritime rescue coordination center, elimination of each search planning uncertainty directly impacts on the number of lives saved.

With the introduction of generation II SLDMBs, the guess-work of knowing what the surface currents are doing, and where they are forcing the survivors, becomes a known measured quantity, increasing the accuracy of the search plan at the same time as decreasing the size of the search area. Searches can easily approach a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The result of using low-cost SLDMBs is a quicker, less expensive search, ultimately saving more lives.