To test the capabilities and personnel of AMSA’s dedicated emergency towage vessel Coral Knight, AMSA will run a pollution response and search and rescue exercise over two days.
The Coral Knight operates in the northern Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait and may be tasked by AMSA for emergency towage of ships, search and rescue or pollution response.
The exercises are following several days of training on board the Coral Knight, which included testing the firefighting capability of the Coral Knight, as well as its capability in a ship tow.
The pollution response exercise will occur in the waters off Port Douglas on Monday, 1 June to exercise the capabilities of AMSA’s dedicated emergency towage vessel Coral Knight.
As part of the exercise, an oil spill boom will be deployed to simulate the containment of an oil spill.
The search and rescue exercise will be held on Tuesday, 2 June off the waters of Cairns to test the Coral Knight’s integration into a search and rescue response.
This is the first full scale search and rescue exercise involving the Coral Knight, which commenced operation on 8 July 2014.
AMSA’s Cairns based dedicated fixed wing Dornier aircraft and a Queensland Government helicopter will be involved in the exercise, as well as a Queensland Police Service vessel.
Personnel from AMSA’s Canberra based Joint Rescue Coordination Centre will also be involved in communicating with aircraft crew, as well as search and rescue personnel on board the Coral Knight.
The Queensland Police Service will deploy a dummy in the water to simulate a casualty. The helicopter will be used to winch the dummy from the water, while the Dornier aircraft will provide communications support.