Coastguard spent more than two hours sweeping Tauranga harbour on Monday after detecting a distress signal, only to find it was an emergency locater beacon discarded at a Mount Maunganui dump.
Western Bay of Plenty Search and Rescue coordinator, sergeant Craig Madden, says the signal from the old model locater beacon was picked up by an aircraft flying into Tauranga.

Sergeant Craig Madden is annoyed by the "careless and irresponsible" dumping of an old locator beacon - tying up police resources when there was a genuine call for help in the water at the same time.

He says Tauranga Coastguard used direction finding equipment to sweep the harbour up towards Katikati in a bid to find the source of the signal.
After two hours, specialist radio signal tracking equipment was brought from Hamilton and the source of the signal was narrowed to the Te Maunga Refuse Centre in Mount Maunganui.
Craig says the disposal of the emergency locater beacon was "careless and irresponsible".
He says there was another incident on the water at the same time the distress signal was received, but fortunately it did not require Coastguard.
The incident involved a 77 year old man who slipped and hit his head on a chilly-bin while fishing with family 15 miles off the coast of Tauranga.
"We need to make sure our resources are available for medical emergencies like that," says Craig.
The signal coming from the Mount Maunganui dump stopped while police were trying to locate it.
Craig believes it was destroyed by a crushing machine that was operating at the time.

Police are warning anyone still in possession of the older 121 or 243 MHz distress beacon to hand them in to police or Coastguard for deactivation prior to disposal.
The new emergency beacons operating on 406 MHz has been the only beacon monitored by RCCNZ since February 1, 2009.
The new 406 has considerably greater advantages with its signal being picked up by satellite within minutes and each signal sends a unique identification code with it so if it is registered with RCCNZ, details of the owner and their activities are known. This significantly reduces the time rescuers need to locate the party in distress.