Professional Rescue

Last week at Seawork 2026 what with the 'Floodfighters Conference' and Workshops never a dull moment - lots of things going on with loads of visitors to say hello! With my volunteer colleague Rescue Technicians from Wessex Rescue, giving outstanding help with their demonstrations and stand staffing, answering lots of questions about what they do when they rescue people from water and floods! The industry professionals at the Floodfighters Conference - Roy Harold (who "MC'd"), Mark Pullinger (1st pitcure), Peter Brown, Matthew Saffin (who showed off his new marine/Helo "Evac" casualty evacuation device - Roy is demonstrating how stable it is in the 2nd picture!), Chris Beer and Adrian Smart (acting for Richard Butler DEFRA NR lead) all gave fantastic presentations on how to improve "Floodfighting and Water Rescue". Thank you to Michal Berdek from SIBEZA Sp. z o.o. and Krisztian Vereb (and colleagues) from BH Fabrications for sharing my Professional Rescue stand. Many thanks to the SeaWork team and Fay Reeve for making it all happen. Likewise I'm looking to the future to see how we can develop the Flood and Water Rescue sector at SeaWork in 2027! Great work everyone involved and a huge big thank you!

All and have you registered your place at Floodfighters@Seawork 2026? https://seawork.com/newfront/seawork-conferences Come and join us AND visit a great “Expo”

The latest edition of Flood Industry is live today and our Directors' article is on page 13, he was very pleased to contribute amongst many other speakers at the ILS Flood Workshops in Egypt last November.

Flood Industry magazine Issue 10

Merry Christmas to everyone.

When an emergency is about to happen jargon has no place as this article well sets out.

Flood warnings and technical language When immediate action is necessary, searching for definitions to help make sense of the emergency alert will slow reactions, something that can prove costly.

Professional Rescue Director presented at the workshops on floods preceding the ILS World Conference on Drowning Prevention, 21 to 23 November 2025. Delegates included lifeguard organisations, disaster specialists, community responders and officials involved in water safety policy.
The International Lifesaving Federation’s (ILS) World Conference took place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, more than four hundred delegates attended from over fifty countries. The World Health Organization (WHO is an agency of the United Nations) co-sponsored the event, an organisation working to reduce drowning worldwide and coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies.
Our Academy Director David Lane delivered presentations during the global flood workshops at the Conference firstly on ‘International Response Regulations (Laws)’, then on ‘Credentialling And Accreditation’, and chaired a session on the second day.
By Professional Rescue contributing knowledge from our understanding and sharing flood response experiences we intend that vital community collaborations can respond to and recognise the changes occurring around our planet. Particularly from climate change impacts, increasing life safety threatening flood events and how urban development impacts on flooding events. Further that Floods inflict a complex web of economic damage globally, resulting in:
• Significant short-term costs
• Persistent long-term consequences
• Devastating for all income levels
• Poor communities are disproportionately affected due to a lack of resources and infrastructure
• Displace millions of people anywhere, including in high-income countries
• Global economic losses from flooding are in the hundreds of billions of US dollars annually and are projected to increase with climate change.
By building international connections, offering training, sharing knowledge and understanding from within our Academy we hope to assist in the mitigation of flood threats and reduce preventable loss of life in our communities.
For more information on Professional Rescue: https://www.professional-rescue.co.uk

Were very envious - SIBS first day and not there (busy with course preparations)! Have a great show Specialist Small Craft Ltd - Marine Distribution - the Roto-Tech craft are fabulous sea keeping craft and have great characteristics for rescue work.

Not a cloud in the sky at Southampton Boat Show, so get yourselves down here! Remember to use discount code "smallcraft" to access special proced tickets!

Last Saturday another step in our project of “Multi-Layer Search and Rescue” primarily from small rescue craft on relatively shallow waters. Aim: to progress water SAR capabilities through accessible technology to rescue within the short time frame utilizing a multi-faceted approach when searching for missing persons in marine or inland waters.
To remind, in very short, the “layers” are: conventional water SAR tools of hydrology/marine knowledge and human deductive reasoning from intelligence/data gathered; ‘Wessex Rescue’s’ co-project with ‘Dorset Search Dogs’ to develop K9 SAR on boats; Roto-Tech Kontra 450 Boat from Specialist Small Craft www.specialistsmallcraft.co.uk a stable robust rescue craft platform for safety and K9 SAR; a drone with RGB & Thermography (TIC) capability & the nvuk.co.uk thermal spotter; hand-held sonar with artificial intelligence (AI) from an Aquaeye; a ROV - its last appearance was a Chasin M2 Pro Max ROV with 4K camera & sonar & recovery claw all to find an anchored Ruth Lee ltd https://www.linkedin.com/company/ruth-lee-ltd/posts/?feedView=all manikin.
Steve Rains from AlphaGeo aided by my colleagues from ‘Wessex Rescue’, came with a specific focus this time, to use the M2ProMax ROV equipped with a (different) sonar – the Blueprint Subsea M1200d multibeam sonar. In very turbid tidal waters & poor visibility, concluded video useable only for very close quarters - sonar came to the fore as the search option – to yet again “search for Ruth”.
The steps taken after ROV launched – distances gauged from the sonar on-screen display to “home in”:
 Conduct “search” and at about 5m first detection of the Ruth Lee Ltd manikin using sonar
 upon closing the distance to 3m, “Ruths” outline became clearer
 fighting the flow, at about 1.5m ROV is switched to the onboard video camera for visual control to deploy recovery claw onto manikin
By the sonar extending the search detection range over the camera then allowed through the video camera an improved recovery efficiency with the claw in that narrow search time frame. Clearly demonstrated how ROV sonar and video camera capabilities complement each other in testing conditions for search and rescue operations. After instruction Wessex Rescue colleagues repeated the tasks with great success.
Huge thanks to Steve of AlphaGeo Ltd (https://alphageouk.com/); Wessex Rescue boat rescue Technicians, Mark of Specialist Small Craft for a great day of research and knowledge sharing.
Mark Pullinger, Adrian Fowler, https://www.facebook.com/WessexRescue,