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Steve Pearce

Chief Executive Officer of Surf Life Saving NSW and emergency services leader holding the Australian Fire Services Medal (AFSM).

Oct 11, 2026

51:38
How are you finding that technology in regard to how it's helping your teams do the work that they need to do?
51:45
Yeah, look, Trent, so we've been actually flying drones, looking for sharks for DPI for around seven years now, but This year, obviously, with the big enhancement, with the upgrade, we've done around 70,000 flights in the last three months looking for sharks.
52:01
And so the program is the largest in the world.
52:05
But one of the offshoots of this, which is a real benefit for us from a water safety perspective, is because we're looking more and more places for sharks, we're obviously inevitably will see other things.
52:15
And our pilots have come across so many other aquatic emergencies since they're flying and I was looking at the stats only yesterday and I think our pilots have identified and been involved in about 90 other emergency incidents with coming across people drowning in unpatrolled locations, people seriously injured or tragically unconscious in the water that has enabled that quick notification response to get our lifeguards there.
52:41
So not only this summer will we have the largest blanket of shark surveillance drones in Australia and in fact in the world looking for sharks but we'll have that extra level of surveillance.
52:53
And, you know, I think we'll actually need it this summer because we know so many people are going to push into areas where there probably won't be lifesavers
53:10
What's your message to people who are going to be heading to the beach over the next couple of weeks? Yeah, look, Trent, I'd say

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