Anatomy of a water rescue: Finding a 'bean' in the deep blue sea

Stuff visual journalist Juan Zarama Perini joins the New Zealand Defence Force and police for a search and rescue training exercise off the coast of Wellington.

It is 3pm when the call comes into 111. There is an emergency off the coast.

Your boat capsized, or maybe you were diving and the underwater currents swept you away. Your crew can’t spot you and all you can see is water and hills in the distance.

The police emergency centre contacts the maritime unit, which dispatches a helicopter to start the search and rescue mission. Sergeant Richard Kennedy gathers his four-man crew. Constable James Kang, of the Police National Dive Squad (PNDS), is among them. They sail on Lady Elizabeth IV – the Wellington police launch – towards the last place you were seen.

Kennedy hopes you are still on the surface.

The currents shake you. You try to breathe deep and slow and keep your head above the water. It’s best you’re not trying to swim against the unrelenting tide.

“The first thing someone in an emergency in the ocean, or any body of water, needs to try is to keep calm. Do not panic,” Senior Sergeant Bruce Adams says.

“The best you can do is to swim across the current to get out of it. If you swim against it, you will get out of puff, and there you are in trouble.”

The helicopter is already in the air. You can hear the rotator buzzing like a mosquito . They are searching for you, but, from their position, they are looking for a bean-sized head in a sea of blue and white moving textures.

More than 30 minutes have passed. Your muscles start to burn, despite the freezing water. The landscape looks featureless: In the water, as in the snow, distances are hard to perceive. You cannot see how far a wave is from your nose. The mountains seem smaller. You know you are not where you were before.

“The currents are such that they can move you up to three or more nautical miles in an hour,” says Kennedy, captain of the Lady Elizabeth IV. “We are talking about a massive search area very quickly.”

The vessel sails through the area where you were last seen. They can’t find you. Constable Ian McCallum sees something in the distance, but is too big to be you. It is perhaps your boat trying to find you.

Kang, from the dive squad, is leaning on one of the walls near the bridge ladder, his eyes scanning the waves. He hopes he doesn’t need to jump into the water. His job most of the time is to recover bodies.

Constable Jago Dellow spots your floating head. He yells “man overboard” and repeats himself, each time with more force. Following his training by the book, he points his index finger to your body. You still don’t look bigger than a bean. His eyes are fixed on the spot. If he loses you, that could be your end.

McCallum, in charge of the helm, follows the young officer and guides the vessel towards you.

The ship is close now. Dellow throws a lifesaving ring that falls close and splashes water on your face. You grip the floating device hard. The breeze stokes your bare hands and burns your forehead. Smith now pulls the cord getting you close to the vessel, your muscles neither resting nor working, still burning. Dellow reaches under your armpits and drags you on to the deck.

They cover you with a space blanket and tell you to stay calm. Smith asks the questions the training book demands – are you OK? Do you feel any pain? What is your name? Where do you live? Then he takes your temperature while asking more questions to keep you conscious.

You feel weak and cold; a stinging pain is telling you that you hit or got hit by something in the ocean. You can’t remember. The blanket starts to warm your body. The wind hurts on the skin. The warmth relaxes your body and the pain becomes more intense.

The helicopter comes close to the vessel, slowly dropping altitude. As it steadies, the door opens and a paramedic throws a rope to Jago. The helicopter and the boat advance in synchronised pace. Jago secures the rope with both hands and Smith holds the tail. Now the aircraft and the ship are connected, and the paramedic rappels down to the ship fighting the wind with a stretcher attached to the harness.

They have trained endlessly for this moment; for you, for everyone, but preferably for no-one. They have repeated these manoeuvres to save your life.

They have landed on the boat and pulled the rope, over and over again; taken turns to carry the stretcher down, to fix it to the carabineers and pull it back to safety in the helicopter. They have done it so many times that every new exercise feels like déjà vu.

Dellow and Smith stabilise your body and ask you to hold your hands in your chest.

You are on the stretcher now. The paramedic waves his hand in circles to the helicopter pilot and a harsh whip pulls you off the boat, the wind blows violently while the size of the aircraft becomes bigger and bigger until they pull you in and close the doors. You feel the speed of the pilot flight taking you to a hospital.

You are safe.

Sitting in your office, or a café, or on your couch, all of this might seem like fiction. There’s no water around you, your body is free from the stretcher and there is no pain. However, if you ever find yourself in danger, this is how they train to save your life.

In this search and rescue training exercise, the police maritime unit was joined by the Defence Force. But most of the time the police use other private helicopter companies for search and rescue missions because the Air Force is not always close or available in every region.

The maritime unit attends about 150 incidents a year. About half are emergencies where a life is at risk.

The dive squad has about 60 deployments a year. It has retrieved 20 bodies from the water in New Zealand since July last year.

According to Water Safety NZ, there have been 49 drownings this year so far.