You've probably noticed the search for unintelligent life going on at Ponto beach in south Carlsbad lately. Or maybe saw the radar and figured it was a surf forecasting tool for the North County Surf blog. Or maybe you were like me and didn't know what the heck it was until you read the following story from the San Diego Union Tribune:
CARLSBAD — A large radar device recently installed at
Carlsbad’s Ponto Beach is part of a federal crackdown on drug and immigrant
smuggling along the California coast.
The device, which can track any vessel within 20 miles,
could help law enforcement agencies spot and apprehend smuggling boats or
terrorists before they get to shore. It is the first of its kind in the
country.
Federal officials have begun to focus more on securing the
coastline after sharply reducing smuggling by air during the past 25 years,
said Keith Jones of the Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, which is
run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“We have a very good handle on the air game and now we’re
trying to respond to this new threat,” said Jones, noting that smuggling along
the coast has been on the rise. “We’re targeting small vessels, which have been
challenging for us.”
That’s where the Ponto Beach radar device, which sits atop a
cliff high above the ocean, can make a difference, Jones said. It expands the
government’s surveillance reach roughly five-fold, because most shoreline radar
devices can only track vessels within four miles of the coast.
Since the radar device was installed in early August, data
from Ponto Beach has been flowing into the operations center in Riverside,
which has a large surveillance room similar to NASA’s Mission Control in
Houston.
New software allows officials in Riverside to combine that
data with smaller radar detectors, footage from police and Coast Guard cameras
along the shore, and data from government planes flying over the coastline.
The goal is launching a coastal surveillance system later
this year that integrates all available data in one place, while also adding
new information from devices like the one in Carlsbad, Jones said.
“We’d love to have them up and down the coast, but we’re not
sure how many we’ll have,” he said, noting that the devices are expensive. “It
could be dozens or it could be hundreds.”
The radar device was installed on a 60-day trial basis to
determine whether the data it gathered would be useful. Jones said officials
have been pleased with the results so far.
He said Carlsbad was chosen because it’s in the government’s
geographic “threat vector.”
Several small boats smuggling both immigrants and drugs have
landed on the shore near Ponto Beach in recent years. Police and Coast Guard
officials have made some arrests, but they also concede that some boats are
probably landing undetected late at night or before sunrise.
Jones said the increase in smuggling by boat is because of
heightened security at the international border and government efforts to
eliminate smuggling by air.
“Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, air smuggling was a
huge problem,” he said. “We hope to slowly and steadily make the same progress
with maritime smuggling.”
Thomas Tomaiko, a program manager for the borders and
maritime division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, stressed that
law-abiding boat operators wouldn’t be harassed.
“The overwhelming majority of small vessels operating in and
around the United States coasts and in our ports and inland waterways are
engaged in legitimate activities,” he said. “However, a small number are
platforms for illegal or illicit activities, such as human and drug
trafficking, and may be used for waterborne attacks on our maritime
infrastructure.”
At Ponto Beach on Wednesday, swimmers and sunbathers
criticized the gray radar device as unattractive. But they also said smuggling
was a large enough problem that such efforts were warranted.
“It’s a little distracting,” said Gina Eckert, referring to
the constantly spinning 12-foot bar atop the device. “But we’re looking this
way, at the ocean, not up there. And they need things like that so they can see
who’s out there.”
The device, which is along the western edge of Carlsbad
Boulevard just south of Avenida Encinas, has raised a lot of eyebrows since it
was installed, lifeguard Erik Burgan said.
Jones, the Customs and Border Protection official, praised
the state Parks Department, which oversees Ponto Beach, for allowing the radar
device to be installed on short notice without any hassle.
