Maritime protection teams from six overseas territories have come together to develop their training techniques in support search and rescue capabilities.
The event delivered jointly by His Majesty’s Coastguard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute included tabletop and water-based exercises around search and rescue operations.
It has been made possible through funding provided by UK’s Maritime & Coastguard Agency, under the FCDO Conflict, Stability and Security Fund’s (CSSF) Governance programme.
Scenario-based exercises included what to do in the case of an overdue vessel or the use of radio communications in incidents of distress.
It was hosted by the Royal Bermuda Regiment Coast Guard who were joined by crews from Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Train-the-trainer instruction means that those who took part can redistribute the information to others in their teams.
Callum Jarvis, a commander with HM Coastguard said: “This is a real opportunity to bring expertise together from across the world, to share experiences and benefit all those involved.
“We focussed on Bermuda as a location because that’s where the training was taking place but the types of scenarios we were considering could happen anywhere in the world.
“Supporting training like this is vital as part of the constant desire to review and look to find improvements on what we do in search and rescue.”
Dave Whiddon, a senior international programmes manager with the RNLI, said: ‘We are proud to work closely with HM Coastguard across the UK and we’ve built on this partnership to help organisations across the overseas territories.
‘Our focus is to share our knowledge to help other countries build their own search and rescue strategies and to deliver lifesaving and drowning prevention activities.
‘We also continue to learn from those we work with and it is a good opportunity for us to ask questions and to continually improve how we save lives at sea in the UK and Ireland.’
LCpl Burgess said: “These are skills that we will use and they’re also things that we will teach new recruits when they come to the Coast Guard.”
Midshipman Ericka Rockett-McBean, of the Cayman Islands Coast Guard, enjoyed the opportunity to learn next to crews from different jurisdictions.
She said: “It’s nice to know and relate to people in other overseas territories.
“There are things I thought I struggled with alone in the Cayman Islands, but people from the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Montserrat – we all have the same issues.”
