THE Channel Islands Air Search team helped track down a large milk container that was lost at sea this week.
Seven containers fell overboard from a ship passing near Alderney in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Six were retrieved shortly afterwards, while the final one was located and recovered near the island thanks to the help of the volunteer aerial search team.
John Fitzgerald, of the CIAS, said that the last container, which measured nine metres by three metres, could not be seen from the sea, so the search and rescue crew were asked to take to the sky to help find it by Guernsey’s Coastguard, following a request from French maritime safety body CROSS Joburg.
“As it posed a risk to shipping, we were asked if we could look in the area generated by the search-and-rescue software used by the maritime agencies,” Mr Fitzgerald explained.
The team scanned an area of around 90 square miles to the south of Alderney, and located the box within 30 minutes.
“The crew found it quite quickly and reported its position to CROSS Jobourg,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
“They sent a small vessel to attach a beacon so that it could be tracked until a suitable vessel could collect it.”
