New Zealand's Coast Guard Volunteers Rescue 6,000+ Lives

Henry van Tuel still remembers the hardest decision of his 25 years as a Coast Guard volunteer. Four hours into a brutal rescue mission off Mahia coast, facing seven-foot waves with three hours still to go, he asked his crew if they felt safe continuing.

"You have to look after your crew first, your boat second, and then the people you are trying to help," van Tuel says. "Because without a crew and a boat you can't do anything."

They turned back that day in 2024, knowing three fishermen remained somewhere in the roiling sea. The boat ride home was silent.

It's the reality for New Zealand's 2,051 Coast Guard volunteers across 62 units nationwide. From July 2025 to May 2026, they responded to 2,603 incidents and helped 6,284 people across more than 224,000 hours.

They're joined by 18,000 Surf Life Saving volunteers, including 4,600 lifeguards patrolling 106 locations. This past season, many of them teenagers, they made 726 rescues and 887 assists, stepping in with preventative action almost 48,000 times.

Imogen Doyle, 29, is part of Dunedin's Search and Rescue squad, which is 60% women and mostly in their late twenties and thirties. The Teaching Fellow at Otago University keeps her phone on silent in the library, terrified the piercing rescue siren will go off during a lecture.

"It never feels great to say no, but sometimes you just can't go," she says. That's why teams stay large, knowing not every volunteer can drop everything every time.

Why This Inspires

These volunteers walk off their jobs, climb out of warm beds, and leave their families at a moment's notice. They battle walls of water and howling winds, often for people they've never met.

The SAR squad now responds to flooding and freshwater emergencies too, not just coastal rescues. In the last year alone, they've saved 189 people across 146 searches, a callout every 2.5 days.

"SAR is about giving back to the community," Doyle says. "We help when someone is in dire straits."

Van Tuel was later invested as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his decades of service. But he and thousands like him keep showing up, knowing some days they'll have to make the hardest calls, and some days they might have to turn around.

They do it anyway, because when someone needs help on the water, these volunteers are all that stands between life and death.