A Scots lifeboat crew were called out twice in four hours to incidents involving divers on Wednesday.
Kyle RNLI lifeboat was called out shortly before 11:00am to reports of divers in distress off Scalpay island, and then again shortly before 3:00pm to reports of a diver in distress in Kylerhea.
Kyle lifeboat ‘Spirit of Fred. Olsen’ launched at 10:45am, when the UK Coastguard received a Mayday call after a number of divers were seen signalling and calling for help near the island of Scalpay off the Skye coast.
The lifeboat crew made contact with the divers, and it turned out they were not in distress, and had been signalling and shouting to each other.
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The pagers sounded again three hours later after a vessel thought there may be a diver in difficulty in the Kylerhea narrows after seeing something in the water.
The lifeboat launched at 2.50pm and arrived on scene at 3.10pm where they began a search, finding debris in the water which had been mistaken for a diver in trouble. As the debris was a danger to shipping, the lifeboat crew recovered it before departing the scene and returning to Kyle.
A Kyle RNLI spokesperson said: ‘The 2 separate incidents were false alarms with good intent. In both cases the reporting parties did exactly the right thing in calling for help when they thought someone was in distress.’
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