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I knew very little about what the coastguard service does, except that they're on the end of a radio if anything goes wrong. But they do more than just Search and Rescue at sea; they also check boats and can impound them if they're considered unsafe, do flood rescues inland, deal with cargo lost overboard and check on marine pollution.
The UK coastguard covers all sea areas half-way to the next seaboard, so in the north Atlantic their patch goes half-way to Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and so on. That's a huge area to monitor, still less to get shore-based vessels to, so they use other boats in the vicinity (referred to as "rescue assets"). Any vessel, even a rowing boat if it has a radio, has to respond to a Mayday call. It may not be able to help - a high-sided container ship wouldn't be particularly useful in a man-overboard emergency, for example - but it can monitor and be an "eye on the ocean" for the coastguard on the radio back home.
One big question concerned the closure of most of the present 18 stations around Britain. The press has made this out to be A Very Bad Idea, but our speaker was all in favour. At the moment most stations have around 3 staff on duty who spend most of the shift waiting for a call; when one does come in they have to deal with it by themselves, and 3 people are not many in that situation. Under the new system there will be fewer thumb-twiddlers and more co-operation, as all the stations will be connected, so it should be much more efficient all round.
Montrose station have a particular affinity for mud. Montrose Basin is a tidal lagoon which becomes a mud-flat with a river running through it at low tide. If anyone gets caught in the mud it sucks them down, up to their armpits, and the coastguards then used to have to haul them out bodily against the suction. Now they use a fire extinguisher to force air down through the mud, which loosens it around the body, making rescues much easier. They haul people across the mud in basket stretchers, using them like sleds to spread body-weight.
They've recently been teaching the same technique to firefighters in Dundee, who have Dundee airport on their patch. If you're not familiar with Dundee airport, it's tiny - so are the aircraft that land there, by commercial standards - and sits right at the edge of the Firth of Tay [Firth = estuary]. At low water there's miles of mud. If a plane misses the runway, there will be 25-30 people stranded and, potentailly, sinking into the mud. Coastguards usually only have to deal with individual strandings; the firefighters needed to know how to cope with lots at once. That training must have been an interesting exercise to watch.
We divers were given lots of good advice on what to do while awaiting rescue. One that particularly sticks in my mind: if you've got separated from your boat and you see a rescue helicopter coming over, take off your hood because a) it's probably black and therefore invisible in the water and b) they use heat-seeking infra-red devices and your hood is designed to keep the heat in. At night the decision's a bit more difficult, because most hoods these days have reflective strips on them which the 'copter's light might pick up - so do you leave it on for the light or take it off for the heat-seeking doodahs? Hmm...
Anyway - "dive safe" and with a bit of luck you'll never need to take that decision!
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