By Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News |
ARTHUR CHUNG CONFERENCE CENTRE, LILIENDAAL — The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Coast Guard formally located the submerged wreckage of the ill-fated MV Barima more than 39 hours after emergency watchstanders received the first of six separate distress coordinates, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) heard on Tuesday.
Testifying on Day 5 of public evidentiary hearings at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Commanding Officer of the GDF Coast Guard, Commander David Shamsudeen, disclosed that the Maritime Operations Centre logged its initial distress alert at 22:51 hours on July 18, 2026. However, the physical hull of the sunken vessel was not conclusively pinpointed until 13:55 hours on July 20, 2026.
Appearing before the five-member commission while visibly battling illness, Commander Shamsudeen revealed that early operational efforts were severely complicated by the fact that the incoming distress transmissions did not identify the vessel by name, forcing maritime watchstanders to spend critical early hours cross-referencing commercial tracking platforms to figure out who was in peril.
The Identity Puzzle: Sorting Unregistered Distress Signals
Commander Shamsudeen explained to commissioners that watchstanders were initially forced to treat the event as an unidentified maritime emergency:
- Unknown Vessel in Distress: Because the early Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) and emergency transmissions lacked registration data linking them directly to the MV Barima, tactical commanders had to verify what ship had transmitted the alert.
- Tracking System Audits: Operations personnel mobilized the Automatic Identification System (AIS), the satellite monitoring platform Skylight, and independent vessel monitoring tools to audit maritime traffic within the coordinates.
- Mapping and Cross-Referencing: Watchstanders plotted coordinates on Google Earth and cross-checked passing vessels and local owners to determine if nearby ships observed flare deployments or heard VHF distress chatter.
“Because we could not initially establish that the distress signal was coming from the MV Barima, we went ahead and did an analysis of our vessel monitoring system in the maritime operations centre,” Commander Shamsudeen testified.
“The objective of this was to not only identify those… if there were any vessels in that area, we could have contacted either the vessel itself or the owners, either to verify if they were aware of any general distress in that area firstly.”
The Coordinate Discrepancies: 12.3 vs. 4 Nautical Miles
The inquiry heard that a total of six coordinates were received at varying intervals between late Saturday night, July 18, and early Sunday morning, July 19:
- Shifting Data Points: The coordinates plotted distress locations across a wide maritime corridor off Anna Regina, Better Success, Better Hope, and Marlborough in the Pomeroon mouth.
- Proximity Variance: Commander Shamsudeen noted that the very first coordinate received was approximately 12.3 nautical miles away from the eventual wreck site. The second coordinate proved to be the most accurate, placing the incident roughly four nautical miles from the final resting position of the vessel.
- Active Mobilization: Despite the lack of vessel confirmation, Shamsudeen insisted the Coast Guard treated the incident as an active life-safety emergency, executing immediate operational deployments across multiple bases.
Tactical Vessel Dispatch and Command Communication
To reach the sprawling search area, Coast Guard headquarters activated assets from three operational stations:
- Pomeroon Floating Base: A high-speed Metal Shark patrol craft stationed at the Coast Guard’s floating base in the Pomeroon River was deployed first, being geographically closest to the cluster of reported coordinates.
- Georgetown HQ & Fort Island: A rapid response unit was dispatched from Coast Guard headquarters at Ruimveldt, while a separate craft deployed from Fort Island to comb the mouth and channels of the Essequibo River.
- The Barima Link Established: At 00:10 hours on July 19, a third response craft pushed off from Ruimveldt. Just three minutes later—at 00:13 hours—Director of the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC), Captain John Flores, contacted Shamsudeen with confirmed intelligence that the Transport and Harbours Department vessel MV Barima had departed Georgetown for Region One.
- Reaching the Zone at 02:00 Hrs: By 02:00 hours on July 19, the Pomeroon Metal Shark interceptor arrived in the operational search zone. Shamsudeen maintained continuous tactical communication with the patrol crew via Starlink satellite links and mobile messaging applications.
The testimony highlights the operational and logistical hurdles faced by maritime first responders during the early morning hours of the disaster, with commissioners continuing to scrutinize vessel tracking delays, agency coordination, and the 39-hour gap preceding the definitive recovery of the wreckage.
