A new security initiative announced by the British Marine Federation (BMF) and security experts Datatag is aiming to tackle the growing number of marine outboard thefts.

The two companies have come together to launch a new scheme called COMPASS; the Combined Official Marine Property and Security System.

Using state of the art technology supplied by Datatag, COMPASS will use a raft of sophisticated methods to ensure that police or prospective owners can determine an outboard’s true identity easily.

The COMPASS scheme will work by installing Datatag’s layered security technologies to an outboard, giving it a unique fingerprint that can be detected by the police or the insurance industry.

The BMF and Datatag say that this unique identity is “virtually impossible to remove” and authorities will be able to discover an outboard’s identity from the tamper evident warning label, the almost invisible UV etching, the microscopic Datadot’s or the electronic tamper proof unique and covert transponders.

BMF CEO Howard Pridding said: “Theft in any market is always difficult, not only for customers but also for the market itself. By launching COMPASS we hope to raise awareness of the issues of theft and promote the positive steps we are taking to combat it.

“We are confident that using Datatag’s unique layered technological approach will result in a significant drop in marine theft.”

Police are already equipped with the scanners necessary to conduct a dock or roadside check and can contact the Datatag call centre at any time.

Datatag managing director Kevin Howells said: “We are very pleased to be able to provide our technologies to the BMF and we are sure that our successes with both the CESAR and Master Schemes can be replicated in the marine market with the COMPASS initiative.

“Theft is a blight in which we can make a big dent and we look forward to a long and successful partnership with the BMF.”