About Us

Oban & Appin Rescue Team (CRT) have 16 Coastguard Rescue Officers (CRO's), who are all volunteers, coming from a variety of backgrounds, and are on standby to respond to any coastal emergency.

The Coastguard Teams covers a large geographical area, stretching from Loch Sween in the south to Appin in the north, a distance of 70 odd road miles, and includes the Islands of Kerrera, Lismore, Luing, Easdale the Garvellachs and Scarba. Covering such a large area can mean it takes us some time to get to an Incident so we rely on our flank teams at Crinan, Appin and Inverary to support us. Communications can also be difficult given the topographical feature of the landscape, and we often have to rely on mobile phones to contact the Ops room. We have a good relationship with the other Emergency services, which means we are often called to assist in many types of incident, from Searching for missing persons to RTA's etc. We are called out regularly for Medivacs at Oban Hospital and Diving emergencies at Dunstaffnage Landing site.

The West Coast of Scotland has some of the finest sailing waters in the UK (and possibly beyond!) and this is coupled with a plethora of wrecks and underwater features; and an abundance of wildlife means our area is popular with the yachting and diving fraternity. Stunning scenery draws many visitors to the area and increasing numbers inevitably means increasing demands on the Coastguard Teams. Oban is a major ferry port, serving the islands of Mull, Coll, Tiree, Lismore, Colonsay and South Uist. The ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne, has three ships based in the port. Dive charter, yacht charter commercial traffic are all frequent visitors to the port as well as many pleasure craft based in Oban Bay. There are also a number of Marinas in our patch as well as Oban Airport

With Dunstaffnage Marina near Oban being the Operating centre for the Coastguard Rigid Hull Infaltable Boats (Rhibs) the Oban Coastguard Team have an additional means of travel to inaccessable coasts and islands. However the Rhibs are used to cover much of the West Coast of Scotland and the coast of Northern Ireland so are not always available for use.