News of your dear ones, those lost at sea need not wait endlessly

Near and dear ones of those lost at sea need not wait endlessly for news of their loved ones as a mobile app SARAT (Search And Rescue Aid Tool) was launched on Monday which will help to save lives and find lost objects at sea.  The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (Incois), Hyderabad, which is an autonomous agency under the ministry of earth sciences has developed this ingenious tool that will help to search 64 types of missing 'objects', including boats, ships and people. The mobile app will be available for download from the Google Play Store. Its web version was released last year. It is a Herculean task to search for people and objects in the vast sea and can be compared to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. Incois said that fisherfolk venture into the high seas even when the weather is rough which leads to the incidence of capsized vessels and missing fishermen. This app will be handy for such rescue and search operations that are frequent in bad weather.   The mobile app has been made in such a way that it can be conveniently available to all. The accuracy of SARAT has been proved earlier when it successfully aided the recovery of the Indian Coast Guard's missing Dornier aircraft off Chennai coast in 2015.