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Tuesday » February 18 » 2003 'Mystery' ships spotted off B.C. coast Monday, February 17, 2003 Two unidentified ships spotted off the B.C. coast are raising concerns about security. The circumstances around the sightings are suspicious. To begin with, the large ships were mandated by law to talk to the local marine traffic controller, in this case the Canadian Coast Guard in Uclulet, which they did not do. Instead, they refused to respond to the attempts to contact them. Also, one of the ships was running dark when it is illegal to operate a ship at night without lights. That ship also refused to respond with its name. The ships were spotted in separate incidents by two different American ships. The first incident happened on Christmas Eve 2002. Around 10:30 p.m., the American logging ship The Greatland noticed a large ship heading northbound about 25 miles off the coast of northern Vancouver Island. Because the ship was beyond Uclulet's radar range, the Canadian Coast Guard was unaware of the vessel until notified by the American ship. The Greatland and Tofino traffic control tried to contact the ship, but they received no response. The second incident was even more suspicious. About 27 hours later, another American commercial vessel spotted another, larger, mystery ship 45 miles off the coast. That ship was also heading north. Crew on board the American ship described the mystery ship as being about 350 feet in length -- the size of a small freighter. The ship was displaying no lights. Uclulet traffic control asked the American ship to query the unidentified ship for her name. The response from the ship was, "Do you think I'm stupid?" -- apparently spoken with an oriental accent. The ship did eventually turn on her navigation lights but disappeared. A Coast Guard marine traffic report states, "These two occurrences were suspicious in nature." In response to the first incident, the coast guard left a message with Canadian Navy Maritime Forces Pacific, but the call was never returned. After the second incident, the navy was contacted again, and this time returned the call within a half hour. The response was that the navy was unable to get in touch with their surveillance people and couldn't do much about the incident. Coastal Watch, a network of volunteers, was also called, but it reported that it had no resources. Coastal Watch asked the Coast Guard to send a vessel out. Eight hours later, advised that the Department of National Defence would possibly send an aircraft out the following day. According to the report, neither vessel was ever identified. And neither was heard from again. With reporting by Ted Chernecki canada.com CREDIT: Global BC Page 1 of 2 Print Story - canada.com network 2/18/2003 http://canada.com/components/printstory/printstory.asp?id=D11D5E6C-7D0D-4323-8057-... It's not known what the ships were doing off the coast, but some have speculated that they could be carrying illegal immigrants. © Copyright 2003 Global BC Copyright © 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved. Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher. Page 2 of 2 Print Story - canada.com network 2/18/2003 http://canada.com/components/printstory/printstory.asp?id=D11D5E6C-7D0D-4323-8057-...