About 60 emergency services personnel from Queenstown, Wanaka and Clyde, along with Rescue Co-ordination Centre staff from Wellington, will take part in a full-scale search and rescue exercise (sarex) in the Wakatipu today.
Dubbed "Moana", the exercise will involve staging several "marine incidents" and is designed to test multiple search and rescue agencies' standard operating procedures in response to a marine emergency.
Coastguard Southern Region spokesman Mark Appleton, of Christchurch, said the majority of those involved in today's exercise would be from the Coastguard, with LandSAR, the harbourmaster and police also involved.
Sarex exercise controller Mark Whitehouse said the aim was to maintain operational readiness and increase inter-agency operability and understanding of how to work together as one in search and rescue operations.
"A live exercise like this helps us to identify any areas where we could be working harder to improve our communication processes and increase safety on our waters - especially when we are working alongside other operators.
"Taking part in the Sarex plays an instrumental part in the ongoing instruction our volunteers receive to push them to the best of their ability, help them cope under pressure and give them the hands-on experience needed to train and prepare them for real-time marine rescues," Mr Whitehouse said.
Mr Appleton said the exercise would begin about 8am today and continue for most of the day.
