The shock news comes days after it was confirmed that Portland Coastguard Station will close in three years’ time, despite an Echo campaign to bring a coastguard supercentre to this area.

Local fishermen said they were worried about the extra time it would take for a search and rescue helicopter to come from elsewhere.

Weymouth fisherman Jason Hemmings said: “Weymouth is one of the busiest sea areas on the south coast – to take away the helicopter is ridiculous.

“It’s a complete waste of money, it seems that it’s only a few years since they built the new site for it and now it’s been axed.”

Another Weymouth fisherman, Terry Studley, said: “All you have to do is look at how long someone can survive in the sea in winter.

“It could be someone drowned by the time a helicopter gets there.

“The survival time is about 10 minutes in the winter, how does that compare with having a helicopter come from Lee-on-Solent?

“A sinking boat will be gone by the time it reached them.”

Andy Alcock, secretary of the Weymouth and Portland Fisherman and Licensed Boatman Association, said: “It’s absolutely ludicrous.

“It’s a disgrace that we have got one of the busiest lifeboats and now no helicopter to support them.

“People’s lives will be at risk without the Portland helicopter.”

200 crucial call-outs in a year

THE Portland Coastguard Helicopter is called out to around 200 rescue incidents a year.

Some of these recent call-outs include: A man who had an accident with an angle grinder, a woman in a motorcycle accident, a multiple car crash on the A35, a horse rider who fell off and broke her neck in an inaccessible place, a passenger on a cross channel ferry who suffered a heart attack, a diver with the bends and a fisherman who caught his arm in the power winch.

The helicopter also went to help a man who fell while climbing at Anvil Point in Purbeck and to assist with an elderly man with Alzheimer’s who wandered off along the coast and to a sea angler who fell ill.