Lincolnshire beachgoers have been warned about the risk of getting stung by weever fish or jellyfish after incidents have been reported in the wash.
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00:00Welcome back to 999 day in Skegness. Now I've found National Coast Watch and I'm
00:08with this water safety officer Peter Smith and this morning and with the link
00:16on this broadcast you'll see that a warning has been put out about sea
00:23creatures on the beach and the risk of getting stung. Now can you explain a
00:30little more about that please? Well people may or may not be aware of our
00:34dreaded enemy the wheeler fish because they hide themselves in the sand at low
00:39tide and people have the ability to step on them and they inject their venom into
00:44your feet and it's quite painful. Yeah if anybody doesn't know what one looks
00:48like we've got a picture down here of them and you can see the the spines on
00:54them that that's what hurts isn't it and those spines actually go into the feet?
00:59Correct yeah it's like a bee sting. Yeah and there's a few spines on there it's like
01:05having about five bee stings or I can imagine how painful that might be. It's
01:11not over serious for most people but if you suffer with anaphylactic shock then
01:15you need to go see A&E emergency wise but otherwise it's like a bee sting and
01:20if you go on to the National Health website it tells you how to deal with the
01:24stings for that and for jellyfish. And in the link with with this post as well we
01:29just outlined what you suggested in the in the post that you put on your social
01:35media. Yeah we try and educate the people best we can. Now for the people that don't
01:41understand you know we know RNLI and we know the Coast Guard but not
01:48everybody understands what National Coast Watch Institute does. Could you
01:52explain that? Yeah well we're the emergency services that are a volunteer
01:58service but we're the ones physically on site to watch over people on the beach
02:02and the sea. We look out the window eyes along the coast is our motto. We also listen to the
02:08radio for radio calls to distress. And in the main we are the people that are
02:14charged with observing what's going on and we're the first point of call to notice what happens to people and we then
02:21arrange for the correct emergency services to be called. Be it the lifeguards, the coast
02:26guards, the fire, the police. It's up to us to actually raise the alarm it's
02:31otherwise people on the beach could be in trouble no one sees them apart from
02:35us and they can end up in serious difficulties. So we are one of the search
02:40and rescue teams but we are seen by some of the professionals to be at the lower
02:45end of the scale but in reality we should be somewhere near the top because we are
02:48the first people to notice what goes on. The others respond to what we see so we
02:53are in the main proactive whereas the search and rescue teams beyond us are
02:58then reactive to what we say to them. And people who don't know where your
03:03lookout is. Well there's 60 lookouts around the British Isles and ours in particular. It's called Skegness NCI but we're actually at
03:12Winthorpe. It's in the grounds of what was the Derbyshire miners rest home at the end
03:19of Winthorpe Avenue. So we're only about a mile and a half north of Skegness where we
03:23are now along the coast and we're responsible. Our area of concern is as
03:28far as we can see both ways by our cameras in the naked eye all the way
03:32across the wash over to the Norfolk coast and we can listen to radio calls from
03:36distress vehicle vessels anything up to 10-15 miles away. Yeah I mean I have done
03:42features on you and you have some really state-of-the-art equipment in there. You
03:46can see a long way can't you? On a clear day we can see, our radius is 8
03:53miles of concern. We can actually see somebody in the sea without opticals up
03:58to 5 miles we can see a person in the sea, in calm seas. Obviously if the seas
04:03rough we can't see so well. And you're all volunteers as well? We are totally all
04:07volunteers yeah we're open every day of the year apart from Christmas Day. I know
04:11you usually have a collection box don't you outside your lookout? We totally rely on
04:16people making donations. So anybody passing by you'd be really pleased if they put a bit of money in there.
04:21And we also receive donations of books. We have a swap library if you like along the
04:26seafront with the books there and we ask people to donate books they've read. Other people
04:31can come along take those books out and drop a few pennies or pounds into our
04:35collection buckets. It helps keep us going. Okay well lots to do this
04:42summer with it with the warm weather I can imagine. We're looking forward to a busy summer but not in the
04:47sense that we're needed to do our job. We just want to be busy so we keep our eyes on people on the
04:52beach and it's a full-time job it really is. When the beach is full up you have up to 1,000
04:56people in front of our watch station and to watch over those constantly for the
05:00watch time for four hours per shift it is mentally exhausting. It's one of those
05:06jobs that you have to be on your toes so to speak and to keep an eye on people
05:10because you know what can happen when you're trying to spot people before they get into trouble. We can see a situation building and we can be alert to that before it takes place.
05:23You are run by volunteers so I guess you're always on the lookout for more. We are indeed.
05:29It's a part of our stay. We've got a little sign here that says today that our coach wants to meet you.
05:36So anybody who wants to come along and join us, call into the watch station we have some forms
05:42there and anybody's welcome to come along and can have a taster session if
05:46they find out if they want to join us or not but training after that is at your
05:50own pace. It takes as long as you wish. There's no pressure for anybody. We just train you.
05:55I'm one of the trainers as well so we can take anything up to six months to train somebody
06:00and some people can be trained within two or three months. Depends upon your background.
06:05Well good luck today. I hope you get to spread the word and good luck with the rest of the season as well.
06:11Thank you very much.
06:20Bye.