Specialist team using sonar to scan riverbed joins search for Nicola Bulley

A specialist underwater rescue team joined police in their hunt for missing dog walker Nicola Bulley on Monday morning.

Members of the Specialist Group International (SGI) team put their inflatable boat on the water just after 11am. It contains special sonar equipment, which can supposedly see “every stick and stone” on the riverbed.

A helicopter was also deployed to scan the area, passing overhead at around 11.15am.

Peter Faulding, the head of SGI, initially offered his services on social media, which were declined by police.

But Lancashire Constabulary decided to work with the team after Ms Bulley’s partner, Paul Ansell, intervened and pleaded for the deployment of the private search crew in the hunt for the 45-year-old.

Speaking before the search got underway on Monday morning, Mr Faulding said he believes Nicola is in the river and that he is confident his team will be able to find her if she is.

“From my experience, normally drowning victims go in and are found 200 or 300 metres or very near where they went in. So I don’t think she would have gone a long way,” he said.

“I do believe she is in here from the evidence that we have got at the moment,” he said. “If we can’t find her in the next three or four days then I’m confident she’s not in this stretch of river,” he said.

Monday’s clear conditions would help the team’s search, Mr Faulding said.

He added that his team was staying with the family and friends of Ms Bulley, and that he had been speaking with her partner Paul Ansell, who is “extremely distraught”.

Locals gathered on Monday morning to watch the search on the 11th day of the hunt for Ms Bulley.

In the nearby St Michael’s primary school, where the missing mother’s two children attend, pupils had been in the playground as the search team’s notable red vans drove past.

Mr Faulding claims the sonar technology used by SGI is the “best in the world”, and the boat can move quickly along the river and scan 20 metres in any direction.

The £55,000 side-scan sonar has a high frequency of 1,800 kilohertz and can cover about 10 miles of river a day, he told Sky News.

Mr Faulding said his teams were briefed at a farmhouse by Lancashire Police at 8.30am on Monday morning before heading to the river.

He said they would be focusing their search on a “down river” section of the waterway, close to the weir, adding divers could usually cover a straight ten miles stretch in a day.

Speaking from his helicopter en route to the scene, he said: “We are having a briefing at 8.30 am, and then going to the location to set up. They are getting a briefing at a farmhouse and then they’ll move to the scene.

“We are working closely with the police to provide extra support. We are going to be using a high-frequency side scan sonar. That's going to be used to search down the river, past the weir.

“That will give us a crystal clear image of anything on the river bed. It shows every rock and every stone.

“On a straight river, we can do about ten miles of river a day. But this is a very windy, changeable river, up and down in depth. So we will do the best we can.”

'If she is there, I will find her with that sonar'

He added: “I’m confident with my expertise over 20 odd years that if she is there, I will find her with that sonar. I will be operating that sonar.”

A friend of Ms Bulley said she has asked a private underwater rescue team to rule out the theory that the mother-of-two fell into the river.

Emma White told ITV's Good Morning Britain: “We hope they uncover nothing, like the police have done for the last 10 days, and we hope Nicola is not in that river.”

Lancashire Police has been deploying teams of divers and a boat with underwater cameras to trawl the river for any traces of Ms Bulley since she disappeared on January 27 while walking her dog.

Police are working under the hypothesis that Ms Bulley fell in the river, but friends and family have claimed there is “no evidence whatsoever” behind this.