A COUPLE who sparked an full scale rescue alert last night after disappearing with a rented kayak gave a false name when hiring the boat.

The Swanage Coastguard IRT team carried out a two hour search from 7pm to 9pm after the couple did not return the kayak to Studland Sea School at the agreed time of 5pm last night.

Dorset Police investigated the hirers contact details, given under the pseudo name Chris Ashton to find the address was false.

The kayak is now "missing presumed stolen" and police are appealing for help to identity the two people and locate the missing Perception Scooter Gemini two-seater orange kayak.

The male, who gave the name Chris Ashton, has been described as 6ft tall, average build with fair brown fair in his late 20s, early 30s and wearing blue board shorts.

His companion has been described as a white female with brown hair.

In a post on their blog, Swanage Coastgaurd said: "The Swanage Coastguard IRT team were called to Studland Sea School at 19:00 this evening to a two person kayak that was two hours overdue.

"The Coastguard Operations room were concerned for the safety of the people who had hired the kayak.

"A full HMCoastguard search of the beaches was undertaken while the Swanage Lifeboat launched to undertake a sea search. 

!Meanwhile Dorset Police investigated the hirers contact details to find these were false. After a two hour search, and in light of the details to hand the teams were stood down on the basis that the kayak had probably been stolen by a person using the pseudo name 'Chris Ashton'.

"The Studland Sea School are now sadly out of pocket, although the owners can be satisfied that their clear emergency procedures worked well this evening. We were very impressed with the safety and professionalism showed by the school.

"Sadly the couple put emergency workers at risk and wasted considerable Coastguard, RNLI and Police time."

Studland Sea School is based at Middle Beach in Studland and offers a wide range of kayaking tours, courses and hire, kayak fishing, coasteering and snorkelling.

Daniel Scott from Studland Sea School said: “Our primary concern was obviously that two people's lives could have been in danger.

"Once we started our own investigations and realised the address was false we started to think the kayak could have been stolen.

“We were very impressed by the professionalism of the coastguard, but we are obviously gutted that one of our kayaks have gone missing because we are a small family business.

"But in the end it just seems as though two people have seriously wasted the coastguard's time and put the lives of other people on the coast at serious risk.

“Someone else could have died whilst the coastguard was out searching for this pair.”

If you can assist Dorset Police please call the emergency number 101 or contact crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, quoting incident number 15:489.