Nicola Bulley: Latest pictures as expert underwater search team sweeps River Wyre in search for missing mum
By Matthew Calderbank
Published 6th Feb 2023, 13:40 BST
Updated 6th Feb 2023, 14:00 BST
Underwater search team specialists, led by forensic expert Peter Faulding, have been brought in to help Lancashire Police sweep the River Wyre with sonar today.
Mr Faulding, founder and chief executive of Specialist Group International, said he was confident his team would find Ms Bulley if she did fall into the River Wyre.
Speaking to reporters shortly after arriving in St Michael’s on Wyre, he said: “If Nicola is here, I’m happy we will find her, if she’s in the river.”
You can watch our riverside interview with Peter Faulding, head of SGI, in our video player.
He said his specialist equipment, a high-tech sonar which will scan the riverbed, has a “very high hit rate”, adding: “I can find anything with that.”
“The clear evidence is the phone was by the river, the dog harness was by the river, so that’s their (the police’s) only clue at the moment and we’ve got to be allowed to eliminate this river, so we can either confirm or deny what’s in here today,” he added.
Peter Faulding – who has previously expressed doubts about the police theory that Nicola fell into the water – said it was a “particularly long” stretch of river to search and his team was a “back-up resource” for the police.
He added: “If we can’t find her in the next three or four days in this river, if she’s not here, then I’m confident that she’s not in this stretch of river. I’d be very confident of that.
“We are going to be working our hardest, we’ll probably be working under darkness tonight for a while and that’s my intention to help the family.”
These are the scenes as the search gets under way today...
You can watch our riverside interview with Peter Faulding, head of SGI, in our video player.
7. Sonar search of River Wyre gets under way
Peter Faulding said: “If we can’t find her in the next three or four days in this river, if she’s not here, then I’m confident that she’s not in this stretch of river. I’d be very confident of that. Picture by:
Danny Lawson/PA Photo: Danny Lawson
Explaining how the equipment works, he said: "The sonar will highlight every stick and stone on the bottom. It’s as good as that. As I tow it along I get a picture on the screen in front of me. The sound wave gets sent across the river bed and then that data gets picked up and comes back and is analysed by the computer, and I can actually measure how long a target is. We can then put a diver in to confirm that target." Photo: Kelvin Stuttard/Lancashire Post
“We are going to be working our hardest, we’ll probably be working under darkness tonight for a while and that’s my intention to help the family," said SGI boss and forensic diving expert Peter Faulding Photo: Kelvin Stuttard/Lancashire Post
The underwater search team normally charge around £4,000 for their services and have launched their ‘top of the market’ 18,000khz side scan sonar today Photo: Kelvin Stuttard/Lancashire Post
Mr Faulding said the machine will pick Nicola up 'straight away' if she is in the water. He believes that the mum likely got "snagged" within around 500 metres of the point of entry if she went into the river and drowned Photo: Kelvin Stuttard/Lancashire Post