A  search in Tenerife in the Canary Islands has been called off after weeks hunting for British teenager Jay Slater who disappeared there earlier this month. 

Tenerife's Guardia Civil told the BBC on Sunday: "The search operation is over. Yesterday was the final day of the search."

But a family friend on the Spanish island said a voluntary search would continue and organizers were looking for people with rescue experience to help. 

"We're just carrying on searching ourselves," the mother of Slater's best friend, Brad Hargreaves, told the BBC.

A Guardia Civil spokesperson also told Reuters that "the case is still open and there are several lines of investigation."

Slater's family and friends had hoped the operation would be a "massive search" but less than 12 members of the public had arrived at the meeting point shortly before it began, BBC reporters noted.

By Sunday morning there were no emergency vehicles or personnel to be seen in the search area.

The 19-year-old from Lancashire has been missing since 17 June after he told a friend he was lost in the mountains.

The Guardia search covered a rocky area with deep ravines in the Rural de Teno park near Tenerife. 

Slater, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was visiting the community for a music festival when he vanished.

He told friends that he planned to walk back to where they were staying after he missed a bus, a walk that would take about 11 hours.