Lake Wanaka's biggest simulated marine search and rescue exercise to date will take place tomorrow.
The exercise will involve more than 30 people, multiple Coastguard units, police and other agencies.
The Wanaka, Mackenzie Lakes, Clyde and Queenstown Coastguard units will be joined on the water by the Lake Hawea marine search and rescue group.
''Because this is a major exercise, we'll need those resources to hopefully find the targets,'' Coastguard Wanaka Lakes president Jim Talboys said.
Mr Talboys has co-written the incident scenario with Coastguard Southern Region operations manager Mark Whitehouse and said the exercise would help identify training requirements.
''It's going to test lots of different areas of marine search and rescue. It will pull out any weak points that we have that we can improve.''
Details of the mock incident would be released to participants tomorrow morning and the different Coastguard units would be activated to assemble in Wanaka and set up a planned search response, Mr Talboys said.
The exercise is being co-ordinated by Coastguard Wanaka Lakes, Coastguard Southern Region and Wanaka police and is planned to be an annual event.
Coastguard Wanaka Lakes was formed in 2011, but has been operating since 2007 as part of Wanaka's Land Search and Rescue group.
