Last weekend was the scheduled weekend for all search and recovery units affiliated to the Irish Underwater Council to partake in a national search and recovery training weekend. While many units done this in one session it was decided to do a much bigger exercise on the river Blackwater.

The search unit has been successfully utilising side scan technology for a number of years on local waterways but recently it was decided to start 3D mapping of many of the local waterways. This would allow the search unit to identify any object underwater that resembles a missing person such as a large tree trunk. The next step in the coming months will be to dive all of these objects, identify them and record them on a 3D reference map; this would provide invaluable information for future search operations and should reduce down search time. While it would be impractical to cover all stretches of local rivers, it is feasible to do this for all higher risk areas. The concept was recently discussed with the manufacturer of the side scan technology in Sweden and he was only aware of one other group who had done this ( a group in Sweden). After some good exercises on Saturday scanning stretches of the Blackwater in Fermoy, Sunday would comprise of diving operations in identifying some of these marks.

Unfortunately with the recent heavy rain fall river conditions were very poor diving with the river water more akin to dark chocolate giving no visibility. Nonetheless each of the dive teams overcame the austere dive conditions and identified a number of marks, well done to all involved.